Authors: Tim Marquitz
It didn’t take but a second to realize it
was an angel, and only a second longer than that to recognize him as one of the
ones who had been there with Jesus when Longinus and I arrived. He stood
imperious, hands on his hips, his spotless white robes flowing to his sandaled
feet. The scowl that darkened his face was fierce. He stared at the alien I’d
followed, who stood there with his arms spread in passive defiance.
“I already told you, this order isn’t from
me,” the dude I presumed was Hurn said. “It comes from the boss himself.”
“But it makes no sense.” He turned and
looked to the handful of aliens who stood at his back. They looked to their
feet, almost in unison, before the angel returned his attention to the
messenger with a snarl. “Why would he ask this of me?”
Hurn shrugged. “It’s not my job to question
his commands, Iriaal, just to pass them on. Has it become yours?”
The angel stared for a moment without
saying anything. His temples thrummed with his anger. When he finally spoke, he
huffed in disgust of whatever he’d been told to do before I showed up. “So be
it. Tell him I’ll do as commanded, but I do not like this.”
With Iriaal taking orders from one of the
Eidolon, it was clear he was hedging his bets, which got me wondering whose
side he was really on.
Hurn bowed shallow. “I’ll inform the master—”
The angel waved him off. “Just go. Your
presence sickens me.” The henchmen muttered at his back emphasizing the
unspoken threat.
I thought about chasing after the alien
messenger, the easier target and all, but Iriaal’s sideways dealings had me
curious. He was off to do something he didn’t want to do, and that almost
guaranteed it was going to be something interesting and potentially useful to
me. It might still have nothing to do with Karra, but then again, maybe it did.
I couldn’t risk letting him out of my sight, just in case.
Hurn snorted and walked off, and I ducked
lower as he stormed through the double doors just below where I crouched on the
balcony. I felt the frame rattle as he slammed them shut behind him, the
thud
echoing through the church an
instant later. The vibrations traveled through the weakened wood, all the way to
the ceiling, and set off a shower of dust, which rained down over the landing.
It hit me full in the face as I glanced up out of instinct at the movement. I
horked
in a mouthful and barely swallowed a sneeze, damn
near blowing my eyes out of their sockets. I wiped away the clinging dust only
to realize the room had gone silent. The subtle flicker of magical senses
swirled around me a heartbeat later.
They knew I was there.
I pulled my guns and stood. There was no
point in hiding anymore, the element of surprise buggered and left beaten on
the side of the road. In the barren waste of magical background noise, I might
as well have been wearing a neon sign that said kick me, I’m not from here.
“Demon!” The angel spat the word as he saw
me, all eyes aimed my direction. “Who are you? Who sent you to spy on us?”
The aliens yanked out their blades without
bothering to wait for an answer, the ring of steel resounding in the desolate
church. They scattered across the room and started toward me. The look in their
eyes told me I wouldn’t be getting anything from them without a fight.
Can’t say I minded too much.
Eleven
A wise man once said, ‘If you can’t eat it
or fuck it, then
kill
it.’ The saying
definitely applied here.
“Bring him to me,” the angel demanded, a
sharp finger pointed my way.
The first of the aliens darted toward the
doors below. I leaned over the balcony for a better shot only to realize he’d
been a lure, and I found myself stretched out and vulnerable. A second alien
sprung off the back of a wooden bench and leapt into the air. He hurtled toward
me at the very edge of my peripheral vision. Steel gleamed in his hand. A
toothy grin appeared as he was about to clear the railing, his sword arcing
toward me. I turned and smiled back, then shot him in the mouth.
His teeth exploded like a bombed Chiclet
factory, tiny pieces of them flying in every direction. The force of the shot
stopped his flight cold. The alien’s chin snapped to his chest, and he dropped
without fanfare, bouncing off the railing and kicking up dust as he slid down
the wall. A trickle of green blood followed after him. His body hit the ground
with a moist
thump
.
And then there were two of them on the
landing at my back, one charging at me from each direction. I popped a shot off
at both without bothering to aim and jumped over the balcony. I thought I heard
a grunt of impact but didn’t look back. While the minions might be able to give
me a hard time, they weren’t gonna do much more than slow me down. The angel
was the meal in the midst of all these alien appetizers. If there was something
to be learned, he would be the one to know it.
Iriaal growled as I cleared the edge of the
balcony and dropped toward him, but I couldn’t blame him his rudeness. I gave him
good reason not to like me by taking potshots at his face. He mustered a
magical shield and deflected my bullets easily enough. They whined into the
darkness as he drew a short blade from a sheath I hadn’t seen strapped at his
back. I almost laughed. This angel was a serious, old school Heavenly warrior.
He was bringing a knife to a gunfight.
It was time to bring him into the modern
age.
I imagined boots the size of kayaks and
willed my magic to make them real just before I hit. His smile melted when he
realized what I’d done, but it was too late to get out of the way. My magic hit
his and momentum won out. There was an electric
crackle
, the sound of a cattle prod hitting a slab of meat, and the
angel went flying. Arms and legs waving behind him like banners, he flew across
the room and slammed into the dais at the far end. The wooden podium shattered,
and the angel went down in a shower of splinters, stirring up a storm of gray
soot.
Unfortunately, like all my other relationships,
my flirtation with gravity turned sour. The ground smacked me in the ass, and I
tumbled into the aisle between the nearest rows of benches. The threadbare
carpet didn’t do shit to soften the landing. Dust and dirt puffed up all around
me, a swirl of gray and brown that choked the air and grasped at my lungs. I
scrambled to my feet after an awkward roll and felt the sting of steel as it
was dragged across my back. One of the aliens stood right behind me. The cut
wasn’t deep, but not for his lack of trying. Blood warmed my spine and leaked into
my ass crack, which tickled more than you’d think.
The alien pressed forward to finish the
job. I kicked a leg out from under him and squeezed off a couple of rounds into
his chest as he stumbled forward. His sword shimmered past as I sidestepped the
blow. I was just about to pat myself on the back when I realized I’d moved
right into the path of the angel.
His magic roared to life not five feet from
where I stood. I could feel its essence and smell the metallic tang as a bolt
of energy smacked into me. Skin
sizzled
,
and I ducked away, the acrid char of burnt meat replacing the mystical sear. As
much as it stung, it reminded me I hadn’t eaten in a while. I was imagining a
thick and juicy steak while I rolled between the benches to escape the
continuing burst of energy, and a thought hit me.
The blast hadn’t hurt half as much as I
expected it to. A quick glance explained why. While all the hair on my forearm
had been singed off, the flesh a nice shade of red, it hadn’t even blistered.
My shirt wafted with tendrils of smoke, but even it was whole. I glanced behind
me to see the benches still standing, only tiny flickers of flame brightening
the blackened wood. The carpet hadn’t fared as well, however, its ratty weave
catching fire in several places.
Once out the other side of the row, I
looked for Iriaal and spied him right where he’d been a moment ago. He had an
‘Oh shit’
expression on his face when he
saw me pop up. As close as I was when he hit me, I should have been sloughing
flesh like ice cream off a cone in the Sahara, but he’d barely toasted the
surface. Either he’d spent his load earlier and had yet to recover or he was a
pinch hitter for the peewee leagues. Both were good for me.
“Don’t be ashamed, Iriaal. From what I
hear, impotence happens to every angel at some point in their life.”
He spit at me and ran off. Before he got
more than a step, I shot his ass. The first bullet clipped his side and he spun
away, a splash of red spewing from the wound. The second hit him in the hip. He
grunted and stumbled while I lined him up to put him on ice long enough for me
to take care of his buddies. They apparently had a similar idea.
If you’ve never been stabbed before, there
is simply no way to describe the feeling of a piece of cold steel entering your
body. It’s a definite violation of personal space.
The alien’s hot breath washed across my
neck as he huffed and he puffed at my back, but he didn’t stand a chance of
blowing this brick shithouse down. His blade was buried in my side and he was pushing
it deeper with every grunt. I lay the barrel of my gun on my opposite shoulder
and pulled the trigger. The discharge drowned his screams, and the pressure
disappeared from the sword immediately.
I looked back toward the angel with the
wailing shriek of my eardrum chasing my head around like a dog barking after
its tail. Iriaal hit the double doors at the front of the church and barreled
through them without slowing, his hand clutching his side. Even injured, he was
hauling ass.
I holstered a pistol as I watched him go and
yanked the sword out my back, teeth clenched to keep from screaming. It slid
free with a wet rip. I let the blade drop as I started forward. It was damn
lucky the indigent assholes had a fetish for primitive weapons. It hurt being
stabbed, but it wasn’t remotely life threatening. And since there wasn’t time
to worry about it. I needed to catch the angel before he got too far. It was also
a good idea to get out of the church before it came toppling down. The fire was
spreading fast.
Halfway across the room, bulling my way
through the rotting benches, I noticed a blur of movement coming toward me from
the growing haze. The gleam of steel gave me a pretty good idea as to who it
might be, so I emptied my clip into the shadowy figure. A limp, alien body
thumped
to the floor at my feet. I
stepped over it and burst into the foyer. The spider webs swayed in the wake of
my passage, sparkling with the reflection of the firelight. Head down, I ran
out of the church, jumped over the broken stairs, and put my head on a swivel
to find the angel.
Not out in the open, he had to have taken
flight or darted around the side of the church for cover. I didn’t see any
trace of his ethereal wings lighting up the sky, so I shot around back. The
waft of char followed me, black runnels of smoke spilling through the aged
window frames and between the cracks of loose bricks. My eyes on the ground as
I looked to spot any hint of trail Iriaal might have left on the dirt-blown, asphalt
surface, I reached the back of the church without seeing anything, and stepped
into the building’s shadow.
Strong hands clasped my shirt just as I cleared
the corner, and I was spun about and slammed hard into the wall, vertigo
blurring my vision. The air billowed from my lungs with a gasp when I hit, my
ribs creaking under the pressure. There was a flash of magical energy, and then
it was gone. Glistening eyes bored into mine from under a dark hood, and I
pushed to draw my power as I struggled to catch my breath. Magic hissed to life,
and I raised my hand to sear the eyebrows off whoever had grabbed me. The face
I saw reflected in the wash of mystical light set my energy to sputtering right
alongside my heart. My magic whimpered and went out as soon as I realized it
wasn’t the angel who’d snatched me up. Not even close.
It was Baalth.
Twelve
“Holy—” I started, but Baalth put a bony
hand over my mouth. He looked like a poop soufflé with butt fudge sprinkles on
top, and didn’t smell much better.
“Not here, Frank.” He released me and cast
a furtive glance around. His voice was a reedy whisper. “We need to go before
the fire draws attention.”
I wasn’t sure who would bother coming to a
fire in a burnt out neighborhood that hadn’t come at the sound of gunshots. Besides,
I had an angel to catch. “I can’t. I need to find Iriaal.”
Baalth shook his head. “He’s unimportant.”
He waved his hands about and I could see the shadows of curious faces looming
in the nearby windows. “There are far greater troubles brewing than an angel’s
betrayal.”
All I could think of was Karra. “I don’t
give a damn about his loyalties. The only thing I care about is—”
“Longinus’ daughter.” He gave a curt nod.
“Yes, Frank, I know why you are here. And though I cannot lead you directly to
her, what I know will be of far greater use to you in her recovery than what that
fleeing angel might tell you.” Baalth looked around again, his eyes darting
about like trapped rats in his head. “But we must go, now, if we are to avoid
further…complications. Come with me.”
I stared at him a moment, my stomach doing
flips while I decided. He looked worn down, only slighter better than he had
when I’d asked Black and White to cart him off to God to save his life. The
skin of his face was stretched tight against his skull, sharp angles and deep
lines defined his leathered countenance. His eyes bulged a little and his
normally manicured goatee looked more like a homeless hedgehog had taken up
residence on his chin. There was none of the vitality he had before Mihheer tossed
him into the energy tank with McConnell. If the Walking Dead producers were
looking for a zombie guest star, Baalth would be perfect for the part. They
wouldn’t even need to spend a dime on makeup. He had ugly to spare.
“Well?” he asked.
His newly acquired spook-face had done
nothing to temper his impatience. I sighed. With all the time I’d wasted
dealing with Baalth, Iriaal was probably long gone, anyway. “All right, all
right. Keep your…” Cloak on, I was gonna say, but the sudden realization that
he looked like the Emperor from the Star Wars movies kept me from continuing.
It wasn’t like I had far to go, but I guess
I was off to the dark side.
~
It was strangely comforting to have
stumbled across Baalth on this backwater, alien planet. I’d been too distracted
to ask God about him and too pissed to bother asking Lucifer, but it was good
to see the demon lieutenant up and about even if he did look like death warmed
over.
He slipped through town, a wraith covered
from head to toe. He stuck to the shadows and rarely strayed from the back
alleys, slowing and avoiding all pedestrian traffic. We’d traveled maybe ten
blocks through the quiet streets of Desboren before he finally slowed and
darted down a narrow side road. I hurried after him as he yanked open a
derelict door and stepped inside a building that looked ready to come down on
top of us. Reluctantly, I followed after, Baalth shutting the door behind me. A
subtle flash of energy sparked off my senses and magical bolts slid into place,
locking us in.
The gentle waft of power caught my
attention. It was so…delicate. I glanced over at Baalth and spied a tiny
crystal adhered to the door, just over his shoulder. It had been its energy I’d
sensed being triggered, not Baalth’s. It struck me then that I couldn’t pick
him out even against the whitewash of Feluris’ magical emptiness. There was a
void where he stood, his essence no more vital than the aliens who populated
the world. He had yet to heal from his wounds.
He turned and noticed me staring. A sad
smile twisted his lips. “Pathetic, is it not?” Baalth walked past me, into the
next room, mechanical lights coming on behind him with a nagging hum. The place
didn’t look any better on the inside than it did on the outside. Baalth dropped
into a battered, metal seat, the orange of rust competing admirably against the
black paint, which had once been its sole color. It creaked beneath him, and he
waved me to another, which sat nearby. I walked over slowly, my eyes taking in
the dilapidated chamber.
There were no paintings or portraits on the
walls, only decades-old paint that had peeled to reveal the cracked surface
below, curly waves of dingy gray jutting out across the room. The ceiling slope
downward, gray stains showing the path of water, which had pooled above and
soaked into the wood. Unlike all of Baalth’s hideaways on Earth, there was none
of the trappings of home here: no desk or leather chair, no personal effects. There
was simply open space and the dust of ages past, the hardwood floor marked with
scuffs and scrapes until the brown had turned a soured yellow. A beaten
stairwell, set into the corner of the room, rose up into the shadows above.
Just beyond it was a weathered door, centered in the back wall.
“Sit…please.”
“I don’t have time for this. Just tell me
what I need to know.”
He sighed and leaned back into the chair. “Must
you always be so difficult, Frank?” Baalth shook his head slowly. “So much like
your father.”
“He’s not what I came here for.” I could
feel my face heating up.
“No, but he’s the reason Gorath brought
your precious little woman here,” he answered.
“Now you’re getting it.”
He chuckled. “But you aren’t. Lucifer,
Gorath, and Karra are all connected. This isn’t just about you and her, Frank.
It’s bigger than that.”
“Not for me it isn’t.” I barked my defiance
of what he was implying, but deep down I knew where he was going with all this.
Nothing in my life had
ever
been just
about me or what I wanted, even with as much as I tried to make it so. There
were always plots within plots. I had so many strings attached to my ass I was
lucky to do anything without someone yanking me back and making me dance the
Hokey Pokey.
“We are
all
puppets, in our own way,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “I thought God
might set aside his ill will and deal with me fairly, but such was not to be.”
“You’re still alive, right?”
“If that is what you wish to call it.” He
stood and spread his arms out, a sneer setting his lip to trembling. “
Loose
your senses and tell me what you feel, Frank.”
I already knew what he was getting at: I
felt nothing. I’d seen it to some degree with Longinus. Even with the fiends to
buffer his magic, he was running on empty and he hadn’t been injured like
Baalth was when the twins brought him to see God. “You need to heal, that’s
all.”
Baalth laughed, casting his cloak from his
shoulders and tearing at the clasps of his tunic.
“Whoa, buddy” I turned my head aside and
covered my eyes. While I’ve nothing against an impromptu peep show, Baalth
wasn’t packing the right equipment to make me want to lay down my heard-earned
dollar bills.
“Look at me!”
The sharpness of his tone compelled me to
do as he ordered. Baalth stood there, his shirt cast aside alongside his cloak,
and there was nothing of him I recognized. Where once had been layers of powerful
muscle and vital flesh, now sat pale skin and protruding bones. His ribs
swelled from his torso as if they hoped to escape its pasty confines. His
stomach was sunken, all muscle appearing to have deflated, his chest little
more than skin stretched tight across his hollow frame. The once perfect hair
was gone, patches of dark fur spotting his skull. There was no comparison to
the Baalth I’d known back on Earth. That demon was gone. In his place was a
homeless scarecrow.
He turned in a slow circle so I could see
all of him, his back faring no better off than the rest of him. “This was not
caused by the journey to this realm.” Baalth eased into the chair. He looked
every bit the old man who’d come to the end of his life and understood it was
over, once and for all. “God did this to me. He took
everything
.”
As much as I wanted to be surprised, I just
couldn’t. Something deep inside of me stirred, a soulless, sinister laugh that
chilled my bones at odds with the guilt and disgust I felt. “Why?” It was the
only question that made sense.
“He has no use for demons, Frank. Not me,
not you, and certainly not your father. While Lucifer stands strong, God will
do nothing to jeopardize his war, but there will come a time when your father
is weak or wounded, just as I was, and He will swoop down upon him and end
their feud once and forever.”
I had thought it over already. “Haven’t
they come to terms?”
Baalth grunted. “The only terms they have
met are those which suit the Almighty.” He stood and walked over to me, his emaciated
body on full display. “I was delusional, nearly unconscious from my wounds and
the trials of the journey between dimensions. I wanted only to live and gave in
freely and as willingly as I was capable of regarding God’s request of me.”
Baalth set a cold hand on my shoulder and met my eyes. “He healed me in
exchange for all of my power, and I unwittingly said yes. I awoke to this.”
Baalth drew my gaze back down to the ruin of his flesh. He returned to his seat
with a weary sigh.
“He intends this for Lucifer, as well.”
I’d seen God’s fairness with Longinus and
couldn’t help but believe what Baalth was saying was true, but I didn’t want to
believe it. “How can He win
His
war
if He’s doing away with His minions?”
“God doesn’t need bodies, only the energy they
possess, their essence. His experiments, us, Earth, these other thousands of universes
He’s created, have stretched His power to the limits of His control. He fights
to a standstill against these rebels He’s empowered with no means to supplement
His magic. His experiment of free will has gone terribly awry, much as it had in
Heaven and on Earth. He has spent too much of His will fighting and can no
longer rein in His creations.”
“He created them. Why can he simply
unmake
them?”
Baalth grinned, yellowed teeth glistening
in his mouth. “You’ve come to the crux of it, Frank. Why didn’t God just
destroy your father and the other rebellious angels who stood against him?” He
waited a moment until he was sure I had no answer. “It’s because He imbued each
and every one of us with the tiniest piece of His own essence. We are truly
of God
.”
I walked over and sank down into the chair
across from Baalth. My stomach grumbled at what I was being told, and I didn’t
trust my legs to hold me up.
“For God to kill us, wipe us from the map
of existence, He would be forced to kill a part of Himself.” Baalth’s smile
grew sour. “Free will made us individuals, gave us lordship over the ember of
God inside us. Were He to forcefully try to take it from us, He would lose
those pieces forever. It is what happened with the flood. He struck out against
His failing and learned that He had severed a part of his own essence, his
soul, which could never be reclaimed. That example might well be little more
than a drop in the ocean of His power, but imagine that multiplied by billions,
all the souls He’s scattered across the various universes of His creation.”
The words fell over me like a tsunami. It
was all too much. “You’re telling me He’s not omnipotent, not all powerful?”
Baalth raised his hands. “Don’t
misunderstand me, Frank. Even with the shards of His power cast across the
myriad universes He’s created, He is still infinitely more powerful than you or
I can imagine, but He was
never
omnipotent. And that was by choice. He never wanted to know everything, He felt
it a curse upon his lonely existence, so He built individuality into His
creations, gave them the ability to think and act for themselves even if it
meant they would violate His own commandments. He just never imagined His
experiments would take the seed He’d planted and seek out the essence of
godhood he’d so cruelly taunted us with.”
My brain swam inside my skull. “So, we only
strive for power because we are, in some small part, a piece of the Almighty
himself?”
“Exactly.” Baalth nodded. “Every tiny piece
of God that resides within us wants to return to the source. They yearn for the
other pieces they have lost. Love is born from this desire, this urge, but so
is arrogance, as well as the need to conquer. We are all a part of God, but for
Him to win this war, He must be whole, or at least closer still than He is now.
This is why He stripped me of my power. And when the opportunity presents
itself, He will do the same to Lucifer, Longinus, and you…all of existence.”
My ass hadn’t puckered this much since
prison. Judging from what the Eidolon were doing on Feluris, it was pretty
clear they knew what God intended and were hurrying to gather what energy they
could before he could snatch it out from under them. Gorath needed this power to
revenge himself against dear old dad, and unless he sucked up a ton of it
before God did, he’d never get off the planet. He’d be just as stuck as us.
He’d either gather enough power to challenge Lucifer, which would end up
killing Karra, or he’d realize he had no chance, which meant he didn’t need her
anymore. That didn’t leave me much time before it all went south.