And Lucifer fell to his knees, knowing nothing would remain after the greedy guts of the monsters he had just created were finished devouring his beautiful tail. Then his tail would become the shit and stench of vengeance and revenge rained down on creation from its own creator’s fallen angels.
And as his hellish and heavenly hounds ate, Lucifer’s scowl slowly turned to a squinting and seditious smile, and then he bared talon and fang and flew into the center of the pack … to join them in feasting on his own plot’s pointed tail.
— CLXXXVII —
AS SOON AS Barbara yelled “Run,” something deep inside my mind took complete control of my body. I ran straight at the Priest Instructor next to Father Dominic—it was unsettling, because as far as I remembered, I had never hit another human being in anger before—and I smashed his nose with the palm of my right hand and I heard a loud “crunch” and the PI screamed out. Then I bent my arm and smashed my elbow into the side of his neck and he went down coughing and I … I could see!
I don’t mean see in the dark with my glasses, because to tell you the truth I think my glasses fell off, but my mind could see everything in that horrible hallway, like it was midday in July.
And I spun at Father Dominic—part of my mind yelling at me not to—and that’s probably the part that slowed down the other voice in my head, telling me to strike him behind his ear. I hesitated just enough that his arm came up, deflected mine, and then it whipped back at my face and hit me so hard in the right eye that my vision exploded with light, and then my stomach took a powerful blow and the air rushed from my body like a river in spring and I fell backward.
But I rolled back over myself—surprised at the lack of burning protest from my back as I did—and I pushed up with my hands and sprang to my feet, and then I stood steady and steeled with one hand wrapped around the fist of the other. And I stared across the five feet separating Father D from me.
He smiled at me. An evil grin so unsettling that the pain crawled its way back into my spine like a spider.
I winced and shrugged a little.
“The fire betrays you, Benito,” said Father D. Though this person was now no ordinary priest. “Takes from you what life cannot.”
I said nothing, as terrified of the voice inside my head screaming at me to kick Father Dominic in the knee, as I was of the man in front of me.
I felt Barbara get up off the floor—she had tripped over me as I raced at the PI. I glanced at her. To my new “vision” she looked bright blue with shades of purple around the edges. And her eyes were dark red sockets. Beautiful, the stupid half of my mind thought.
A foot slammed into my hip and my inner voice shouted at me, Grab it! I did and then I spun the leg and the body attached to it twisted and spun fast, and then another leg came out of the blur of the spin and a foot glanced off my cheek and stars shot into my face again.
And then a terrible claw clamped down on my throat and I grabbed it with both hands, but it was iron and I choked and choked and then went to my knees.
“Stop it!” Barbara yelled. “You’re gonna kill him! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
The “SMACK” was so loud that I—it sounded like a broken bone. “Shut your hole!” Father D roared at Barbara. “Monkey wench!”
And I tried to call to her, but no air could get through the crushing claw on my neck. And my inner mind—the angry assaulting one—shoved itself at the hand on my neck. My thumb rammed itself into the crease between the thumb and forefinger of the hand on my throat, and instantly the pressure was gone and I gasped for air. Sweet oxygen rushed into my burning lungs and my mind felt a brief peacefulness I could only describe as the warmth of my mother’s smile. It was short-lived.
I saw a blinding red flash streak at my face and I caught the father’s arm and twisted it and he groaned a little, but then another red flash hit me in the head and I spun. My inner voice was shouting orders faster than I could carry them out. Spin with him, swing your elbow, knee him in the stomach, grab his forearm, punch behind his ear with your thumb! My actions and reactions were not only uncharacteristically angry and aggressive for me, but they were none I’d ever watched or witnessed in someone else. I had no idea where they were coming from.
There was a brief pause—an instant of ice-cold silence. My back burned and my inner voice begged for the pain to stop, but my more rational mind yelled at it, Focus! Pain is not real.
But this pain was more real than anything I had ever felt. My inner voice searched for the warmth and comfort of Barbara’s touch, or ointment, or syringe—anything that would help me make sense of what was happening and stop the pain from it. “Barbara!” I shouted toward where I had seen her fall.
“She’s clouded your mind from your faith,” Father D said. Now he was standing a few feet away, right over Barbara’s limp body on the floor. “I shall kill her for that … or maybe I’ll just feed her to the faithless fornicators at the market? That would be a just and fitting penance. I can smell that lust in her heart, anyway”—he glanced down at Barbara’s body and then looked back up at me and smiled—“for you.”
“What?” my inner voice asked him out loud.
Then my mind spoke to me, more calmly this time, He speaks with a serpent’s tongue. Do not let his lies distract you. He plans to sacrifice you both.
The animal spoke in a deep and dreary voice, sounding nothing like I had ever heard from Father Dominic before. “Her loins burn for you, Benito,” the animal said. My mind had ceased to consider him a man, much less a father of faith. And he looked burning-brick red. “Can’t you smell her?”
An anger in my mind began to fight its way through the fire in my spine. And when my inner voice tried to speak, Benito, he’s—
“Shut up!” my mind shouted out loud at … I didn’t know which one of them—the animal priest or my vicious inner voice. “Get away from her!” my mind shouted again.
I was no longer in control of … anything. My inner voice had snapped to some raging protective youth, and an inner mind of violence had taken root next to it. They argued over what to do while the terrified little ten-year-old I knew I was simply watched, powerless to stop any of it.
“She has infected your faith,” the man-animal said. The priest’s deep voice dulled into my mind like a blunt blow from a hammer. I could feel the pulses of red pain pounding at my vision. “It’s no matter, there is no infection on God’s green earth in the Garden … that cannot be cured by the raging red truth of fire.”
As soon as he said it, my mind and my inner voice and vision were all surrounded by blasts of bright red light and voices screamed and wailed misery at me and through me and into my ears, and I put my hands over them and tried to scream but no sound came out. The pain and the helplessness of it overtook me and I fell to the floor of the hallway and slumped to my side.
Fear and hopeless feelings clouded out everything, and I looked across the floor at Barbara and tried to reach for her with my hand. But I couldn’t move toward her and I watched as she got farther and farther away, then my hand turned to a blue blur … and then everything went black.
— CLXXXVIII —
ONCE SHANNON IS done impressing me with fancy acrobatics from his axe—it’s clear he’s no stranger to swinging it—he chops the blade straight down and buries it into the stump next to his chair with a resounding WHACK! He looks at it for a second before he sits down. “Right then,” he says, “that problem’s pooched. Get it right this time, eh? And … well then, there you have it.” He stares back into the fire like he’s waiting for an answer to come out of the flames. “You want me to give it to him this go-round, or will ya be handling the bulk of it your own self again? … Though … considering how much knocking about you took on that last… Eh, no matter—it’s settled. Better hand it over me own self. Try not to bathe your benevolent britches in shit this time, okay. Put up a little bit of a struggle. Give him an angel-ass or two. At least get me wager money back. Just remember
, me mate’s no cherry-chokin’ cherub, he ain’t. He’ll eat your eyes out if he gets into trouble with ya—seen it meself.” He chuckles at the fire again. “Taught it to me, he did.”
By the time Shannon’s done lecturing at the flames in his pit, I wonder if it’s me he’s warning. My eyes are a little wider than I would like them when he looks up. “Shannon,” I say, “who’s getting the axe?”
Shannon ignores my question and asks one of his own. “Leave him a little dignity, will ya? She’s a right mean bitch, that one. Persuasive as all creation, she is. And he’s still me brother—bloody hellhounds, we were.” He flashes me a hesitant smile. “But what’s boiled is buggered, so you and me’s square, we are. You’ll do what needs doing, right enough.” Then he looks back into the fire, having succeeded only at confusing me more than when I walked into his shop.
The other thing that happens once Shannon turns to business is that it’s hard to get him turned away from it. He’s a singularly formidable force. He’ll do what’s right, no matter the sacrifice in souls that has to be made to do it.
My Shandian mind reminds me that I should be a little more like him, Get the molasses.
It is what I came here for and I silently reprimand myself for getting distracted by Shannon’s wine and song. The one shining bright light is that she’s not here to distract me with the third of that list.
“We’ll get to your molasses soon enough,” Shannon says. “You got a mite more murderin’ to do yet, I expect.
I remember that Shannon also had a habit of finishing the sentences in my mind, whether I tried to keep him from doing it or not. But like I said, he likes to switch subjects like a dog likes dirt. Colonel-ism—
Shannon pulls the axe out of the stump like my mother used to pull a toothpick out of an almost-baked cake. The scar left in the stump would be final for a man. “He’s coming, then. Mind your manners,” he says to me. “He ain’t warm and wonderful like me. Sour as a snake’s asshole, that one. And he means to hurl you to Heaven, so his master can have at ya proper.” He pauses, gets a really serious look on his face, and then he points his axe at me when he speaks, “You be real careful with her when you finally get up there, you do. About the time you get lost in them big black peepers she’s got, the next thing you’ll be losing is your head. Don’t want to do that twice, eh,” he chuckles.
Most of what Shannon has told me over the years only makes sense as hindsight after some terrible event. Though all of what he says sounds colorful and clouded in inference, he rarely uses metaphor or hyperbole to prove a point. But a warning about some witch with black eyes? My Shandian mind tells me to check my neck, and then I look at the axe in his hand. It would not be pleasant. My inner voice makes a silent note to add “severed head” to the list of ways I would not like to meet my maker.
None of this is what I came here for though, and if any of it is to make any sense at all in the end, I’ll need to get back to my dead angel before it’s too late to revive him. “The molasses?” I say.
Shannon stares past me at the inside of the entrance to his shop. “You can fetch me molasses when you get back,” he says. Then he squints and my Shandian mind feels every muscle in his body tense and steel toward the door. “He’s here.”
I barely turn around before the second ware-watchman—the one with the dead eyes from the front of Shannon’s shop—bursts through the door. “Raid!” he yells. “They ended Isra”—he catches his breath—“Lucinda’s beat up bad!”
I assume that Isra was his pickpocketing partner, and I frown and prepare myself. Because there’s not a citizen or sinner, or former seminary student for that matter, at the Mike who doesn’t know what “raid” means.
Every once in a while, to assert their authority and remind everyone just who’s truly in charge of things… As if the average citizen’s grumbling stomach, starving and slaving for barely enough credits to buy bread each month, would ever let them forget. But just in case the raging, raping and remanding to a sanatorium weren’t enough to sear fear into the citizens’ minds, the black-clad brutes of Protection raid … whatever in the damnation that we’ve all found ourselves … whenever they want to. Considering how my day has gone so far, it’s just my luck that today it’s a Mike raid.
My Shandian mind knows that luck is not the reason—they’re here for me. But if what Shannon said earlier is true—
“Beatin’ me bonny?” Shannon says. I can feel his anger welling up behind me. “If I—she’s done testing you then,” Shannon says. “Time to pay the penance, Benito.”
My Shandian mind also knows when to follow Shannon to pure business. I stare at the little dead-eyed miscreant at the door. There’s a little more life behind his panting stare now. Fear and rage will do that to … anyone. “How long has he got?” I ask Shannon. Because my dead angel is the point of my whole visit.
“One day,” he says, “that’s the Word.”
I look at the pendulum clocks. Time’s almost up, I think. In two more hours, I will have failed.
— CLXXXIX —
LUCIFER DELIVERED THE news of their fates to each one of the ten of them. None could claim to be heavenly angel nor hellish demon any longer. They were mutineers—traitors in a mutual conspiracy to save eternity—nothing more saintly nor sinful than that. And no book had been written in all the eternities thus far, nor likely would any book ever be written henceforth about their contribution to the history of the Word.
In all likelihood, Lucifer had told them, none of them would be remembered at all. To rulers, average angels busy burning and beating in the benevolence of their masters’ Words as part of their eternal routine did not dream nor deliberate of being … more. Then again, most rulers did not understand the wants and wishes of the subjects they purportedly served any more than they cared to. And that was, more often than not, very little.
The fall was the only way. Lucifer had told them that, too. For to return to the Garden as anything but a little “soul security” purgatory angel, ferrying spent souls back for Judgment, or a direct messenger from the enemy, the voice of the god Life herself… If a fully-fledged angel wanted to resurrect, they would have to fall from grace and go back as a filthy half Man-monkey to repeat and repent before being able to return to … whichever Heaven they deserved.
And though an angel could be killed by any man, beast, or more likely another angel lopping off their head with an axe, resurrection was only possible at the hands of a Protector. An eternity only ever had one of those.
Back in her throne chamber with her two executed guardian angels safely returned to their previous … “glory,” the god of the present Eternity, Life, perched above and between her guardians. She sat high on the Throne of Judgment, the gargantuan granite chair that had adorned the Throne Chamber of the Protectors since the dawn of the first eternity.
Life knew that her former archangel companion, Lucifer, harbored hate toward her. And she knew that he desired to rule most of all. Yet in attempt after attempt to discover the details of his deception … she had tasted nothing but failure. Now, she would have her first report from her spy.
Utipa, the angel Life sent to spy on Lucifer in order to discover his plot, stood with her head high. Once she recovered from being rebirthed in the arena, Utipa had sought out her Golden Guardian brothers and sisters to deliver her report. Surprisingly, they had seized her upon meeting, and then flew her straight to their god’s chamber room.
Now, Utipa stood, flanked on each side by the guardian angels that had fetched her from the center of the Arena of Reckoning. She steamed at their insult. Each guardian held one of Utipa’s wings, anticipating one of Life’s fits of fury.
Utipa lowered her head and rolled her eyes up just enough that she could see Life. She had done her Lord master’s bidding, she had offered deception to the Dark Angel of Light, and she had discovered plot. And though its purpose was still shadowed, she was insulted at being roughly dragged to report by her own brother and sister in arms—s
ummoned as if called to task for slight of sin.
Utipa growled and cawed lightly. “Is this how loyal angel is to be rewarded,” she said, barely able to contain herself, “as deliverer of desired message?” She stared maniacally at the guardian on her right and spoke more calmly than she wanted to, “Take talon from wing, sister … lest you lose favored hand.” Then she turned to the golden guardian on her left and spoke more harshly to him, “I will not speak twice of it!”
Life motioned at the two guardians with one of her wings. “Come now,” she said, “do not handle Heavensent messenger with harsh intent. Utipa has returned bearing message of mutiny’s design.” Then her black orbs glowed as she looked directly into Utipa’s eyes. “Have you not, fair Utipa?”
Utipa jerked her wings from the loosening talons of her two brethren, gave each of them a threatening glance, and then she addressed her ruler, “Am I to be treated as criminal,” she said, “for the offense of filling Lucifer’s fist with favored feather on angel’s neck?”
“You were discovered?” Life screeched.
Every angel in the chamber steeled themselves for combat at the noise. It was a reaction born and built over hundreds of years of benevolent battle. Yet theirs was even more chiseled—granite guts ground to anvils from living at the center of most battles’ raging starts—Life’s outbursts against insolence.
The two guardians nearest Life slammed their wings behind them, and their flight feathers interlocked to form shields—blinding pain from the misery of lightning twice in one day was not a prospect either of them favored.
The two guardians by Utipa mirrored their reactions.
And Utipa, from hard-won habit of survival, followed quickly behind them, slamming her wings behind her to form the shield and the warmark of Life, the bright shining orange sun.
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