Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  “Other means will be very costly to me,” The BisMark finally said.

  Michael nodded.

  “Very well, but only if you agree to incarcerate all involved, in case an offering becomes necessary”—Michael stirred, but The BisMark held up his hand—“should other means fail and the need arise. Or would you rather Tiamat consume the world?”

  Michael groaned, which, coming from an archangel, sounded more like the low rumbling of a jet engine. “Very well …”

  “But Miiichael!” Medusa protested. “He’s innocent. I know he is!”

  “There is one more condition. After, we must conduct a trial, and should they be found guilty, mortal—human—punishment will be inflicted on them.”

  Michael gestured to Officer Steve, who strolled over to Atargatis. “And these two humans,” The BisMark pointed at me.

  “He’s not guilty. He has no idea what’s going on,” Medusa said.

  “Perhaps that’s true of your human officer.” The BisMark gestured, and the gargoyle immediately let Conner go. “But the hotelier … he has quite the history of hating Others.”

  Michael thought about it for a long moment before finally conceding. “Very well—take him in.”

  “And his date,” The BisMark said, pointing at Medusa. Michael’s eyes widened, but The BisMark quieted him with one word. “History.” Michael considered this before nodding in agreement.

  With that the Gruff went around arresting us all.

  The BisMark nodded with approval. “You’re far more agreeable now that your god is gone. Very well, Archangel Michael. I shall do what is required of me—Tiamat approaches and I must prepare. Now, if you please.” He gestured to all of us.

  “Go,” Michael said.

  “What? You’re letting him go?” I burst in, getting in close.

  Michael shot me a look that would have stopped an avalanche. Then, turning his attention to The BisMark, he bore down a finger on his chest. “Once that imminent danger is dealt with, you will submit to a full investigation—”

  The BisMark waved a dismissive hand, cutting Michael off. “Of course.”

  “Release Conner,” Michael said. Then, gesturing at me, “And cuff him.”

  “Hold on—don’t you have to tell me what I’m charged with? As far as I can tell, you’re arresting me for delivering the wrong fish.”

  “You’re correct, Human Jean. You’re charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction,” Michael said.

  “Holy—” I started. Michael shot me a look. “—guacamole,” I finished. “Come on, that’s what you charge terrorists with. You know me, I’m no terrorist. I’m a hotelier. And a bad one at that.”

  Michael nodded. “Your actions—”

  “Alleged actions,” I corrected.

  “Alleged actions released the Beast—a creature far, far more powerful than any nuclear bomb. Even if it was an accident or an act committed out of ignorance, you’re an accessory, a fact that will be taken into account during your trial.”

  “Trial?”

  “If it comes to that … yes. We must first conduct an investigation,” Michael spoke with the enthusiasm of an angel forced to sign his fifty-six thousand seven hundredth benediction.

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you know damn well that I had nothing to do with this. What’s more—you know that if a big, bad monster is coming to town, I’m exactly the guy you need on the street, helping. This is lunacy.”

  Michael sighed. Well, sighed might not be the right word. Being an archangel of the highest order, his deep baritone voice made James Earl Jones sound like a pipsqueak going through puberty. What came out of Michael was more like a bass drum that shook the entire room. “Rules must be followed.”

  “Rules!” I yelled, then abruptly stopped. Michael was the original Boy Scout. And by original, I mean the very first one. Ever. He followed rules to the letter of the law, never wavering, never questioning. He would have arrested God if he caught Him with His hand in the cookie jar. Hell, he’d even arrest himself, if he found a probable cause. Nothing I could say or do would change that, so I saved my breath. If I was going to get out of this, talking was not the way.

  Steve made his way forward, and I saw The BisMark standing off stage with Stewart. Evidently, the two of them were scheming their master plan to stop the Beast, or whatever that monster was. Since it was coming out of the ocean, I personally thought it was the kraken.

  I looked over at Medusa. She was already in cuffs, her snakes covering her face in shame.

  Officer Steve approached me, shifting from four legs to two with an unnatural grace. “Mr. Jean-Luc Matthias?” he asked.

  “Seriously, Steve. We just spoke a few hours ago.” The giant goat stared at me expectantly. “Yes,” I sighed. “I’m Jean-Luc Matthias.”

  Officer Steve pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “Jean-Luc Matthias, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you in a—”

  I saw a blur of movement from the corner of my eye, and it gave me an idea. “Just a minute,” I said. The BisMark stood near the edge of the stage where Atargatis was being read her rights. Officer Steve put up a hoof to stop me, but I said, “You. Peacock Man.”

  The BisMark looked down at me over the rims of his glasses.

  “I want to speak to you.”

  “Jean-Luc Matthias, you’re under arrest—” Steve continued.

  I shuffled out of Officer Steve’s grip, twisting my wrists before he could cuff me. I took a step forward, and his hooved hand grabbed my shoulder. I didn’t resist. I was close enough to The BisMark for what I needed to say. “You have this whole thing figured out,” I said. “This apocalypse, this Tiamat. Even Michael is behaving exactly like you need him to. Your plan is near perfect … but you forgot one thing.”

  “Forgot?” The BisMark said, lifting an eyebrow. “Please, indulge me. What did I forget?”

  “Bob,” I said.

  Bob’s Back, Baby!

  “Bob?”

  “Yeah, Bob,” I said, kicking up. I let myself fall—not backward, but forward—so that my belly hugged the stage floor. It hurt like hell to have so much crashing down on me. Bob jumped on the stage, claw hand out—he was going for my abdomen. But instead of slashing me like he intended, he raked the gargoyle across its back. Way to go, Bob! Of course, had I not been fast enough, I’m pretty sure he would have disemboweled me, in which case it would have been, Bad Bob! Bad!

  The stone creature actually winced in pain, let go of me and turned to grapple with Bob.

  With no gargoyle on my back, I rolled away. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I could try to free Atargatis or attack The BisMark, but since everything was happening so fast, I decided on the default option—run.

  I tried to get off stage, but The BisMark stepped in my way. He didn’t attack. I guess doing so would sully him. Instead, he just blocked my path. I tried to get around him, but every time I slid to one side he mimicked me perfectly, down to the twitches of my hands and my facial expressions. He was flawless. It was like trying to outrun your mirror image in a room full of mirrors … I swear to the GoneGods, at one point his face even started resembling my own, like he was becoming me.

  I took a step back, and he stepped forward. It was then that I understood what he was trying to do. Back me up so that one of the gargoyles could grab me.

  I couldn’t let that happen, and if he wasn’t going to get involved by attacking me, I’d just have to make him. But again, he anticipated my moves perfectly. I took a swing at him, and he dodged like someone who didn’t have a care in the world. He just kept moving in front of me. We weren’t fighting, we were dancing—synchronized swimmers swirling in the currents of air.

  I needed to get out.

  But whatever I needed didn’t matter. I was losing ... that was, until the lights went out.

  ↔

  Every sound, every light, every bit of ambient hum created by everyt
hing that runs on electricity shut down, and the ballroom went dark, with the only light being a soft effervescent glow from the table’s centerpieces and the strange crystal vat that sat on the stage. This was my chance. I rolled to the side, and The BisMark, either distracted by the sudden darkness or unable to mimic me without actually seeing me, didn’t follow. I tumbled off the stage, hitting the ground with a clank and an “Ow!”

  I pushed through the darkness, dimly lit by the candle centerpieces. In the faint glow I caught a glimpse of Medusa, who stood in handcuffs off to the side. When our eyes met, I mouthed “I’m sorry,” hoping that the small gesture would make up for our ruined date. She smiled, her dimples catching the soft light. Hellelujah!

  I also saw Michael, who stood motionless, his hand around Medusa’s arm. He just watched, not letting me go, but not trying to capture me either. Instead he boomed out one misplaced word: “Deputy!” I would have assumed he was yelling at one of his officers, except he was looking right at me. Then Michael did something I never saw him do before and I would never see him do again: he winked.

  At me.

  I didn’t have time to think about that now and thanked the GoneGods that he wasn’t getting involved. In the past, Michael had chosen inaction when dealing with me. He once described it as letting fate decide what to do. It spurred me to run. Whatever my role in all this was, being locked up in a cell wasn’t it.

  I made my way to the main hall when another gargoyle—how many friggin’ gargoyles were there?—leapt to grab me. ScarFace.

  At the last second I managed to duck, and ScarFace flew over me. I thought I had cleared him, but his hand reached back and latched on to my wrist. Crap! I was caught. I felt myself being lifted off the ground when I heard a smash. Penemue slammed a chair over ScarFace’s back. The gargoyle hit the ground. It was down, but it would be a matter of seconds until it got back up. “I guess I’m in it now,” the angel said with a huff.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. We bounded for the hall’s double doors, when they burst open.

  Penemue and I tumbled through, and the doors slammed shut behind us. I turned to see EightBall and Astarte pushing a heavy delivery luggage cart to block the door.

  “Come on,” I yelled. “That won’t hold them for long.”

  We ran upstairs to the main foyer. “Split up,” I yelled, heading for the back. I couldn’t outrun the average Other, so I needed to get to my car. “I’ll meet you at the front gate.”

  Astarte and EightBall ran to the front door (the words succubus and human rang in my ear as they passed under the little bell), while Penemue followed me out back. The plan was to get to the kitchen, then sneak out the back door. But before we could get across the lobby floor, Others started appearing from the service stairwell, blocking our way.

  A large, gaseous, off-white humanoid creature lumbered towards us. It looked more like the Michelin Man than anything I’d ever seen. White puffs of smoke bellowed out of pinprick-sized holes all over its body. It ran—or rather, bounced—toward us. As it got closer, the Others that had been following it turned to run back downstairs.

  “Out the front?” I said.

  “Yeah, out the front,” agreed the angel. We both turned on our heels toward the front entrance.

  “What the hell is that?” I cried out.

  “A fugu-monster.”

  “What’s that?” We slammed against the door, pushing it. We were almost outside.

  “Think of it like the puffer fish of the demon world. It blows itself up to—”

  POP!

  The explosion blew out the door and sent us flying. Lucky for me, The BisMark’s excessive amounts of ceremonial balloons broke my fall like rapidly popping bubble wrap.

  The balloons lay limp beneath me, never to inflate again. Unfortunately, balloons and fugu-monsters weren’t made of the same kind of rubber. The fugu-monster, now deflated, stood above me with a wicked smile on its face. It started sucking in air again, puffing itself up.

  A Lot of Hot Air

  While the fugu-monster inflated to a critical mass, my hands ran along the gravel feeling for a sharp stone. As much as I enjoyed being blasted out of my own hotel, I wasn’t going to let this fugu-monster blow itself up all over me again. I slashed its stomach, and from the thin cut I made, the fugu-monster started to hiss as it slowly deflated.

  It looked down at the gash, embarrassed. Then, placing its pointer finger and thumb together, it pinched closed the hole with its two fingers and started reinflating itself.

  “Cheater!” I yelled, as I ran down the hill.

  Astarte and EightBall were already halfway there, running toward the fence that bordered the highway. Penemue and I followed. Ever try to run downhill? I don’t mean walk downhill, or even hop. I mean a full-on run. After a while momentum takes over, and the strides that on a flat surface would have you running full-on begin to slow you down. You need to either keep up the momentum, fall or jump. I jumped. I must have cleared eight feet, and I landed with all the grace of a cat. But then gravity took over, and I tumbled down until I hit the mesh of the fence. I hate gravity. I really, really hate gravity.

  Astarte was right in front of me. She pulled out her knife and slashed at the chicken wire, prying it open. EightBall, with his nimble and agile eighteen-year-old body, crawled through, careful to look both ways before popping out onto the highway. Astarte followed, but I couldn’t leave Penemue to fend off the gargoyles.

  I turned to see Penemue halfway down the hill. He was trying to take to the sky but couldn’t, because he was being wrestled down by two stone gargoyles—and one of them was ScarFace. Every time he pulled one off, the other jumped on him. One he could handle, but two were proving too much for the angel.

  “Go on,” I said to Astarte. I rushed up the hill and threw a billiard-ball-sized rock at ScarFace. It hit him without effect, but he did look over at me. “Your mamma is a sun-baked mud,” I cried out. A bit lame, but it worked. ScarFace let go of Penemue and flew at me. Rather, he shot over to me, far faster than five hundred pounds of rock should be able to. He was burning time, a lot of it. Judging by how fast he was coming at me, he didn’t know what he was doing or didn’t care. The Doberman-sized gargoyle didn’t have an inch of soft flesh. At the speed he was moving, I was more likely to survive being hit by a bus.

  I backed away to the fence hole, and just as ScarFace was about to squash me, I let myself fall. He zipped by, crashing through the fence and onto the highway. At this time of night there were few cars on the road, but there were trucks—large, Optimus-Prime-sized, long-haul vehicles going forty miles an hour. The gargoyle hit a front grille, and with the screeching of steel on stone, he skidded across the asphalt, shooting up sparks and losing one foot on the way. At first I thought I’d killed him. Well, not me, but the truck that so conveniently met his trajectory. A pang of remorse rushed through me. There had been enough death in the fourteen years since the Others arrived, and I didn’t want to see any more of these unique creatures go down, not even one that was trying to kill me.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when the gargoyle stood up. Relief quickly turned to dread as he hobbled toward me. He encountered his foot along the way, and stepped into it. I could hear the grating of stone on stone as the smell of charcoal rose in the air. His ankle glowed red, and I realized that he was welding himself together. Great—I was fighting the gargoyle version of the T-1000.

  ↔

  I started across the four-lane highway, hoping to put some distance between me and ScarFace before he healed himself, when Penemue fell on the road, grabbed me and took to the sky. “Human Jean,” he said, “I fear that we’re—what’s the expression? Screwed.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”

  “We can’t outrun all of them and we can’t fight them.”

  “There must be a way out.”

  “We must hide, but in order to hide, we first have to get out of their line of sight.”

  “Thanks,”
I said. “I know how the game is played.” Flying would be no use—we were exposed up here—so I scanned the ground looking for somewhere we could duck into. “Oh, crap! Look!” I pointed to the ground.

  Astarte and EightBall stood in front of the Being Human Salon with their hands in the air. Miss Sally Webb stood in front of them, holding a gun that was pointed at Astarte’s head.

  Hellelujah!

  ↔

  “What the heck is going on?” Sally shrieked at me as Penemue lowered us down. She was wearing silk pajamas and big fluffy pink sandals, a purse slung over her shoulder. “It was not enough that your guests ruined my flyers—now you show up at … at … midnight! Were you going to sneak up on me like thieves in the night and turn me into a frog? Stars above, if it wasn’t for my alarm system—”

  “Miss Webb,” I said, getting out of Penemue’s arms. I put up my palms in an “I come in peace” gesture. “There’s been a situation at my hotel, and we could really, really use your help.”

  “Help? If you think that you’re going to win me over by coming here at this ungodly hour and—” Sally looked behind us. From her vantage point she could see an angry mob of Others clambering down the hill toward us. Some of them literally had pitchforks and torches, and I suddenly knew exactly how Frankenstein’s monster felt.

  “Oh, heck,” Sally muttered.

  “Ahhh, Miss Webb,” I started. “I don’t know what—”

  “Oh hush,” she said in a stern schoolteacher voice. “Get inside.” She eyed Penemue and Astarte, then added, “All of you.”

  Hellelujah!