Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  “Overkill? Overkill!” Mr. Cain yelled. “We did it because should there be a prison break—much like what is going on right now because of you—we didn’t want a prisoner getting down there and into the old prison. They could literally fortify their position down there and it would be a fight to get them out. Again, something you’d know if you bothered to ask.”

  Suddenly l felt like a fool.

  “The deception, the covert operation … really, Jean. Are such theatrics necessary?”

  I ran my hands against the old corroded walls. Solid metal. No matter what Mr. Cain said, I knew what I was looking for had to be here. Tink’s instincts were never wrong.

  I desperately wanted to ask Tink, get some additional insight into things that my own senses weren’t seeing or hearing or smelling, but I couldn’t risk bringing her out. Not here, not like this. The average human might not know who or what she was, but Mr. Cain wasn’t your average human. And I wasn’t convinced we were alone down here, either.

  “Come on, Jean,” Mr. Cain’s voice chimed from the watch. “This is ridiculous. I’m sending guards to fetch you. Let’s discuss this as civilized—”

  “You’re not sending anyone,” I growled, touching the screen. The image of a hill troll popped up. He was holding a guard in each hand, using them as human shields as several other guards surrounded him. Luckily for the hill troll, he had managed to get his back to the wall. The guards weren’t going to be able to do much against him unless he slipped up. I sent up a silent prayer that he could hold on just a little bit longer. “Are you really going to divert valuable resources in such a crucial time just to get me out of an empty room? Unless, of course, this isn’t an empty room at all.”

  Mr. Cain paused, his eyes flickering for just a second. “No, I suppose not.” He sounded uncharacteristically hesitant. Had I shaken him somehow?

  There was a cry behind him as the troll hill let out a growl. He turned, his own watch’s camera tilted in the direction of the cry, and I saw two guards chasing after a qalupalik scampering along the ceiling.

  Cain looked down at me, his face close. “Jean—I am very disappointed. There was so much we could have done together. Now I fear that our relationship will have to be terminated.” Another scream. “If you will excuse me,” he said, and the screen flickered off.

  Wasting no time, I scanned up and down the metal box. It was like someone took a storage container and just shoved it in the ground. This place served no practical value, not for the old prison that used to sit on this island—certainly not for the modern one, either. My instincts screamed at me that I was missing something crucial, but instincts couldn’t tell me exactly where to look.

  I walked to the far wall, pulling out my hunter’s sword and holding it in front of me. The far wall was like the other three: solid and uncompromising. So I did what I always did when I was facing a dead end. I closed my eyes.

  And listened.

  The room went silent, the only sounds being a soft hum from the generators above and my own heartbeat. One minute passed. I kept my eyes closed. Another. Standing as still as I could, I listened.

  Then I heard it. A faint tick. Only thing was—we were in an empty room. No clocks, no creatures, nothing. So that tick was either the natural sounds of a container held underground … or something else.

  I waited another minute and the tick came back, a little more audible this time. Silence again for another minute before I heard it one last time. All three ticks were coming from in front of me and to the right. Without warning, I threw my sword in the direction of the tick, tossing it so its blade spun and would cover the most area with its edge. It didn’t hit the far wall like it should have. It didn’t hit anything.

  I opened my eyes to see the blade suspended in midair.

  “Nothing here, huh?” I said.

  “Indeed,” a voice ticked as the glamour dissolved, revealing the last five people I’d ever expected to be in the same room together, let alone in the basement of a prison.

  Council … to the Sidebar

  The room that had just been an empty metal box transformed before my eyes, now decorated in old tapestries that lined the walls with ancient scripts I doubted any human scholar could read. Ritualistic candles burned and a large Persian rug covered the floor, its fabric displaying the scene of the insect god Colel Cab leading her denizens of ants, bees, flies, mosquitos and a thousand other species I couldn’t name up a hill, presumably to a better life.

  And standing on that carpet was presidential front-runner Mr. Yew, along with Mr. Cain and Colel Cab, the bug god herself. Each one of them stood in embroidered circles above the rug’s depicted mountain. Circles that overlapped. Circles that made up Memnock Securities’ logo.

  Colel Cab was closest to me—a creature that stood two heads taller than me, her three pairs of eyes each blinking in a sequence that started with the lowest pair and gradually worked its way up. She folded four pairs of her arms over her scaly exoskeleton. Colel Cab held my sword in her hard pincers.

  Mr. Cain and Mr. Yew, however, were not in the same stance, but stood still, there arms to their sides, looking more recently-turned-into-zombies than actually alive. Neither of them looked at me, both staring down at the ground immediately in front of them. I glanced at my Memnock watch. Mere minutes had passed since I’d spoken to Mr. Cain. How had he gotten here? And what had happened to him?

  Beside them stood Miral, brandishing her own sword—a sword, might I add, that was pointed at me in a less-than-friendly manner. Despite her menacing stance, her face contained no malice or hate, nor even recognition.

  But that wasn’t the strangest thing in the room. Not by a long shot. That prize was reserved for Penemue, who was pinned to the wall like a butterfly on display—his wings outstretched as nine-inch nails held him in place.

  “Oh, Penemue,” I said. “How the hell did you get here?”

  “Kidnapped.”

  “When?”

  “In Paradise Lot. Just before you left and right after I told EightBall that I … you know.”

  That was right—before my Assault on The Garden, we met at the Millennium Hotel to prepare. Despite my objections, Penemue told EightBall about accidently killing his parents and, well, let’s just say the conversation didn’t go well. And now he was pinned to a wall. All in all, a bad day for this twice-fallen angel.

  “One last question—why?”

  “Remember Metatron? Apparently they couldn’t get the answers they needed from his severed head. Funny how that works. So I was next in line … too bad I can’t tell them anything because, you know …”

  “The Celestial NDA?”

  “Celestial NDA. I can’t tell her about my contribution to human Creation.”

  Colel Cab interrupted our little reunion. “You don’t need to tell me. I already know. You see, dear Human Jean, the twice-fallen angel knows how to bind a soul to a body.”

  ↔

  “Ah, yes. And without a soul, your monsters are mindless anomalies.” I looked over at Mr. Cain and Mr. Yew. “And let me guess—these two are the most important pieces of your world-domination puzzle?”

  “Indeed. But let us not dwell on such things. For now, let me welcome you, Human Jean, to the true Garden,” Colel Cab said, unfolding her bottom set of hands out in a welcoming gesture. The two pairs above did the same, following the same delayed sequence as her eyes. Pair by pair, the hands outstretched to me before folding again. Only the upper pair of arms remained unfolded, thin, hard-shelled, three-fingered hands reaching out to me like we were old friends, reuniting us with a hug. Of course, the open, unfolded set of arms also held my sword, but in a non-threatening, Come-over-here-big-fellow—it’s-been-a-while kind of way.

  And as we embraced, that’s exactly how she felt to me … like an old friend, someone I’d missed very dearly and was excited to see again—which wasn’t right. For one thing, I had never met this Colel Cab before, and for another, it was clear she was behind the kidnappi
ng. Judging from the chamber we were standing in and the basically unconscious Mr. Yew and Mr. Cain, she was also behind a hell of a lot more.

  But despite all that, I liked this creature. Respected her, even. I knew enough to know she was responsible for some nasty stuff … but I felt like there was a reasonable explanation and as soon as she shared it with me, all would be right with the world.

  GoneGodDamn—another empath, I groaned to myself.

  Empaths were Others who could naturally adjust your feelings toward them, usually in a favorable direction. They didn’t have to burn time to do so; simply being near them was enough. Almost all creatures have empathic abilities to some degree: angels inspire calmness and faith, ifrit give you a sense of dread and horror … hell, even little Cupid—yeah, he’s real and works at the Paradise Lot First National Bank—made you feel all gushy and happy inside. But empaths—they pushed your emotions. Guided you to unnatural feelings of calm or love or joy or lust or anger … whatever emotion they stood for.

  I didn’t move; I didn’t speak. I just focused on the feeling, countering it with the only tool humans have to deal with emotions: cold, hard logic.

  I went over what I knew. First of all, this empath brought forth emotions that I hadn’t felt only moments ago—feelings of welcome, safety, joy. Ten minutes ago, I was stressed out, alone and very much upset.

  So I did what you always do when encountering an empath. Focus on the emotions I should be feeling. And right now, the emotion I should have felt was anger. I thought about my friend, pinned up to a wall like some insect on display; I focused on Miral—the purest being I’d ever met—and how the same lunatic who was trying to manipulate me was controlling her; I thought about Medusa and how she didn’t deserve to die … not the way she did.

  And I thought about Bella and how the GoneGod world took her from me, too.

  I focused on all the crap that happened because of the gods leaving—but still, feelings of trust and goodwill bubbled inside me.

  And then it hit me … that was exactly what Colel Cab focused on: the sense that if only we obeyed her, we could fix our broken world. I’d been around enough wannabe gods to know where this would lead. You don’t fix anything by putting all your faith in one being. You have to believe in yourself and believe in the other, and treat both with equal respect. That was the field on which unity and healing could grow.

  So I stopped focusing on the injustices of this new world and started in on the injustices of the world before. The world that was cruel and hard and unforgiving that existed when the gods still sat on their lofty thrones in the sky. And there was one injustice that always burned my soul when I thought about it—my mom’s death, and how unfair it was that she was taken from me before I could meet her.

  I thought of all the nights she wasn’t there to console me. All the mornings that we didn’t sit together to share a meal or a conversation. I thought about how painful it was seeing the other kids with their moms and dads, and how I had neither … and an old, primal rage grew in me that pushed out any goodwill Colel Cab tried to falsely instill in me.

  Colel Cab must have been taken aback by my ability to resist her, because she tilted her head to one side, all three pairs of eyes narrowing as she examined me more closely. “Interesting,” she muttered, and then, waving away the thought as if it meant nothing, said, “You are not surprised to see me. Tell me, Jean, how did you know you would find me here?”

  “I didn’t. You were just my best guess.”

  Colel Cab gave me a curious look.

  “What? You want to know where you went wrong so that you can improve for the next time? Learn from your mistakes and all that? You can’t honestly be looking for a performance review.”

  “Indulge me.”

  “Michael. And Miral. Whatever your magic is based on, it is crippling to angels. Well, most of them, at least.” I gestured pointedly at Penemue. “Seeing Miral with the same glazed-over look Michael had at the Tree—and bowing to you? I knew you were involved. You had to be. What I didn’t know was whether or not you were the head honcho, or just another pawn in this game.”

  “Very good. But do you know what I am involved in, exactly?”

  “You mean, other than kidnapping children to create an army of monsters? No, not really.”

  “Peace,” she clicked. “That is my aim. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me commend you on finding this place. We had veiled it, but your power of perception is extraordinary.”

  I looked at my watch, where only a moment ago I had been speaking to Mr. Cain. Now the man who stood before me was in no condition to speak. He stood, head down, shoulders hunched, looking like a man who slept standing up.

  Colel Cab cast a gaze at Mr. Cain and smirked, her smile touching all six eyes. “Ahhh, Mr. Cain … he was an,” Colel Cab paused as she considered her next word, “interesting case. It is no accident that he built this place in the image of the Garden. He wants to be worthy of this place, like his father once was. But the difference is that there will be no one to cast him away. Not this time.

  “Even that was not enough to satisfy him, however. You see, before you stands a man who says he is determined to make up for centuries of evil. Truly it is what he believes his mission to be … but when you strip away all the platitudes and self-deluding lies about what he really wants, you are left with the truth.”

  “Oh? And what’s that?” I asked.

  “That he wants an apology. An apology for being marked and cast away. For being discarded. He wants to feel worthy. To be worthy. But with the gods gone, there is no one to apologize to him—and that is why he sought you out. If the gods aren’t there to forgive him, then perhaps another human who is also on a quest for redemption can. He sees you as a brother-in-arms, of sorts. The Brotherhood of the Damned, perhaps. Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?”

  “And so, what … you turned him into a zombie or some kind of insect drone that does your bidding?”

  “Oh, no,” Colel Cab said, clicking in confused. “No, no, no … I merely gave him the ability to believe in himself. The version of him”—Colel Cab pointed up, presumably toward the lighthouse tower where I had talked to the anomaly version, the Sinbad version of Mr. Cain—“the one you interact with … it is his ideal self. A human devoid of regret, one who is confident and strong. Once I showed Mr. Cain how to believe in himself … well, the rest is history. And let me assure you, Jean, the Cain you know is far more pleasant than the Cain that is standing behind me.”

  I nodded. “So I’ve heard. What about him?” I pointed at the sleep-standing Mr. Yew. “Is he part of your plan, too?”

  “Him? Yes, of course. A man who despises Others like no human I have ever met, and although he is a man of money, he could never place himself in a position to rule. Mr. Yew suffers from a frustrating lack of charisma. But Mr. Yew’s ideal self … that is another man, altogether. He is charismatic, decisive, a master diplomat. Mr. Yew’s ideal self has a real chance of becoming President. And with his hateful policies in place, it is only a matter of time until the whole thing …” Colel Cab made an explosive gesture with her bottom pair of arms, and then gestured the rising flames with her other three pairs of arms in such a way that, I had to admit—I was green with envy at her Charades skills.

  “OK,” I said. “So you have a prison and a President. What’s next?”

  Colel Cab’s exoskeleton lips curled upward as she walked over to me, her arms held up to her sides. She threw my sword down with such force that the blade stuck into the metal floor. I thought about going for it, but that would have been a mistake. Grabbing the sword meant starting a fight. And given that both Colel Cab and Miral were more than capable warriors, that was a fight I wouldn’t win.

  Colel Cab watched for a long moment before nodding in approval at my restraint. “Do you know what a complete god is?”

  I rolled my eyes at her Bad Guy monologuing. “Enlighten me.”

  “There are five pillars
to any god who is to rule supreme: wisdom, commerce, agriculture, fertility and war. These are the five mortal needs required for worship. Wisdom to guide the human in their earthly ways; commerce because within each human lies greed and ambition, and commerce allows the human soul to explore both; agriculture and fertility because … well, because humans are guided by their most base of needs: food and sex; and, finally, war … because as much as you humans talk about peace, the truth is you are only comfortable with a stick in your hand.” She held up five fingers on each of her left hands. “A successful god must provide its denizens with all five pillars.”

  Colel Cab pointed at a spot on the Persian carpet beneath our feet that depicted several farmers tilling a field. “Agriculture and fertility are taken care of, their principles such an integrated part of modern man that I need not tend to it. But the other three pillars? That is another matter, entirely. Meet Commerce”—her bottom right hand pointed at Mr. Cain—“meet War”—her middle right hand pointed at Mr. Yew—“and meet Wisdom.” Her two upper right hands pointed at herself.

  “You see, Human Jean, the gods made two mistakes when ruling this world. The first was that they sat in their heavens and watched as the humans went about their business, letting them indulge in their free will. That is one error I do not plan to make.

  “The other mistake was that they wanted to be loved. I do not have any such needs.”

  “Better to be feared than loved?” Penemue chimed in from his forced perch on the wall. “Or are you going to hit me with some other platitude that powerhungry megalomaniacs like to spout?”

  “Actually, it is better to simply be worshipped. Loved, feared, hated, respected—these are emotions that can be manipulated and changed over time. But worship—that is far less malleable. Already I have worshippers of many kinds. Behold—a handful of them stand in this very room. In time my worship base will grow and, with it, so too will my power.”