by R. E. Vance
But before OtherMe could get close enough to Aau to do that, the Earth began to rumble. Little pebbles of loose asphalt and concrete began to shake, vibrate, then lift off the ground and hover in midair. And not just from the area around OtherMe and the decommissioned Others—the little loose stones were being gathered from all around the island, hovering like algae in a churned-up sea.
“What … the … hell … are … you … doing?” Judith cried out as her poltergeistic rage continued to draw in every loose piece of debris it could find, like filings to a magnet.
OtherMe looked at the aging poltergeist and said exactly what I would have in such a situation: “Judith … calm down. Your burning through too much time.”
Judith gave me a smirk and, with a Don’t-tell-me-what-to-do defiance in her voice, screamed, “I have wanted to do this forever!” She pointed at OtherMe and a rush of pebbled fury shot out, hitting him in the chest and throwing him several feet back.
Evil-and-Cute turned toward Judith, but before she could close three feet on my mother-in-law, Judith lifted another hand and threw Evil-and-Cute straight up in the air.
“Yay!” Sinbad cried out in triumph—and busted into the “Gangnam Style” dance.
Conner struggled to his feet and ran over to Judith. “Ma’am,” he said, calling forth the spirit of the ultimate Boy Scout helping an elderly lady cross the street. Michael would’ve been proud. “You’re burning time, ma’am. We thank you for helping, but please … we can take it from here.”
“Good,” Judith said, letting go of the energy she had gathered. A hailstorm of pebbles fell to the Earth, accompanied by the solid thud of Evil-and-Cute falling. Judith sniffed, her rage subsiding into her usual Holier-than-thou-ness. “I don’t want to have to do everything myself.”
Free of Judith’s Comet, OtherMe started to stand. But before he could get to his feet, Aau put a foot on his chest and pulled out the Eye of the Fifth Hour. I thought he was going to put it on OtherMe, like he had done in the alleyway, but he didn’t.
Instead, Aau put it on himself.
A light poured out of the jackal-guard and struck OtherMe square in the chest. I, we, were filled with memories … but not our own. They were Aau’s—his centuries guarding the Fifth Hour for Re, the loss of his brother during the GrandExodus and his years on Earth, miserable and alone … until one day he found purpose again in protecting the young boy across the alleyway. Elliot. We both felt his dedication to protect the child, how he would lay his life down without a moment’s hesitation if it meant getting the boy safely home.
OtherMe staggered back and held his head in his hands. He was sobbing.
Evil-and-Cute got to her feet and made a diamond with her hands. “Kill them. Kill them all and let Colel Cab sort them out.”
But OtherMe didn’t move. He stood there, shaking, cradling his head, ignoring the Occultist.
“What are you doing?” Evil-and-Cute said. “End them!”
Still, OtherMe didn’t move—except to lift his tortured expression up to stare at Aau with equal parts fear, admiration and respect. He—we—knew Aau … and to know a creature like him is to love him.
“KILL THEM!”
But neither of us—not RealMe, not OtherMe—could kill someone we loved.
↔↓↔
Of course, this all happened above at the exact time I was facing off against Miral down in the panopticon. Miral swatted me with her wing, leapt into the air and came down at me with her sword. Even though she was under Colel Cab’s control, a part of her held back. I know this because that move, if done with the ferocity and speed I know Miral to be capable of, would have ended me. But she hesitated—and that hesitation bought me enough time to deflect her blow with my hunter’s sword.
Our blades rang out, echoing on the prison walls. I got to my feet. “Please, Miral. Stop.”
But the angel would not heed my plea. She swung her sword down and I tumbled out of the way. She blocked my attempted escape by outstretching her wings and, as literally as possible for an angel, creating a net with her wings that boxed me in.
Boxed me in with feathery wings—a stupid move on her part. There were a hundred other, far more lethal things she could have done to end this fight. Capturing me with the insides of her wings exposed to my blade wasn’t one of them. She was either toying with me or—
I looked up at the angel’s face. She stared back with vacant eyes, but her lips were pursed together. I had known her long enough to know what that expression meant. It was what she did when all the choices before her were bad ones. It was the way she wore her smile when she knew that whatever was coming next would hurt … and I knew that Colel Cab’s control over her wasn’t complete.
And I knew what she wanted me to do.
“GoneGodDamn you, Miral,” I growled. “Come to your senses! You don’t want to do this.”
Miral didn’t react to me; she didn’t even seem to acknowledge that I had spoke. Instead, she stared at me with the same passive eyes that she wore the entire time we had been in this stalemate. Still—the lips stayed pursed.
Then, without hesitation or warning, she swung her sword at me. I barely had time to get below her arc, her blade missing me by less than an inch. Even with my sword in hand, I was seriously outclassed against the former Captain of the Lord’s Army. I did the only thing that gave me a slight chance. I tackled her.
Like I said—a slight chance.
Wrapping my arms around her waist, I held tightly, pressing my body against hers so that she could slice me in two with her sword. I knew that if she were to use her weapon against me, she’d have to change the angle with which she held it and slash it across my back. But with her wings in the position they were, she also needed to retract her wings. Either move would take a second, maybe two, giving me enough time to do what I had to do if I wanted to survive.
“Forgive me,” I said, tears welling in my eyes as I spoke. And then I did the cruelest thing I have ever done to my friend. It was the only thing you could do when in a life-and-death struggle with an angel.
I hobbled her.
Thrusting my sword up and around and using her body for leverage, I stuck my sword deep into the joint where the wing meets her back … and I twisted.
Miral writhed with pain, letting out a shriek the GoneGods themselves must have heard, wherever they were. Tears of light borne from pain streamed down her face. In her agony, I saw a brief glimmer of the Miral I knew and loved manifest itself on her face. But it was only a brief glimmer; her face went hard again and she narrowed her eyes.
“You dare,” she said.
She didn’t need to say more. The wound I inflicted on Miral wasn’t something she’d recover from. Ever. Sure, years of physiotherapy and perhaps several dozen surgeries preformed by the one or two doctors that specialized in wing reattachment might let her fly again, but she’d never take to the skies with the grace and beauty she once took for granted. Wings and flight—the two facets that make an angel an angel. And I just maimed her in every sense of the already ugly word.
The kind of wound I gave her was the pre-show to delivering the final death blow. It was the crippling move done just before you put down an angel for good. It had to be, because no angel—sane or under the spell of some overpowered Other—would stop until they killed the one who had dared to inflict such a grievous wound. Think of it as an angel’s “rage” ON-switch; from the fury that shone in those tear-glistening eyes, I knew Miral was in full berserker mode. If she could, she would kill me … and not just kill me—she’d make drawing-and-quartering seem like an act of mercy. Given the chance, she would literally tear me to pieces, making sure that I lived—and screamed—for as long as possible.
If she was given the chance. I looked at Miral, still bellowing in agony. I’d have to make my move now, before she regained her senses. A hobbled angel is still an angel—complete with supernatural speed, strength and resolve. I looked at the sword in my hand and thought back to Conner’s w
ords in the desert:
Sometimes a good man does bad things. Something a bad man does good things. Which one are you?
Given what was at stake, I really didn’t know what kind of man I was.
“I’m sorry,” I said, lifting my sword. Luckily, she was already bent down from the hobbling, so her head was in easy reach of my sword’s hilt.
She went down when I hit her, but she wasn’t quite out.
So I hit her again.
And again.
And again—until finally the angel Miral, my friend and confidant, an angel who had treated my wounds both body and soul, lost consciousness.
↔↑↔
OtherMe stood up and shouted, “No! I will not be used by you. Not now, not ever!” Either Aau’s Eye made him more dramatic, or the ideal Jean was a Drama Queen and years of shying away from decisive language made RealMe the passive-aggressive bastard that I was. Either way, when OtherMe spoke, everyone listened.
“What are you doing?” Evil-and-Cute asked, still trying to enforce her will on OtherMe. The mental assault was like having a thousand arrows flung at you all at once, except instead of turning into Evil-and-Cute’s pin cushion (mentally speaking), an image of Captain America’s shield flashed through my mind as OtherMe lifted a mental shield to block her attempt to control him. Even though this was all happening in the confines of his head, and I was experiencing it within my own, I could feel seemingly literal thuds as her arrows failed to penetrate his shield.
After seven volleys of increasing intensity, Evil-and-Cute shrieked, pulling at her hair. Clumps of gorgeous brown strands laced around her fingers. In her attempt to control OtherMe, I could feel her frustration. It wasn’t getting-stuck-in-traffic frustration or the-deli-was-out-of-your-favorite-cheese frustration. This frustration was as literal and intense as the original meaning of the word intended to encapsulate. She was suffering, and it hurt as much as one who held their hand in a bed of blazing hot coals.
“How?” she screamed. “How?”
I had to admit that I wanted to know the same thing. But OtherMe didn’t offer an answer, didn’t even entertain her question. He just smirked at her and said in a calm voice that would have sent chills down Clint Eastwood’s spine, “It’s over.”
GoneGodDamn—I’m friggin’ cool!
His words seemed to shake Evil-and-Cute to her senses. She took a moment to collect herself before a devilish smile crept across her lips. “Oh, no … Jean’s Shadow, it is not over. It is far from over. It has just begun.”
She raised up her hand, her forefingers and thumbs pressing tightly against one another with so much pressure that I could see the wrinkles in her fingers go flush with white. “Up until now, you have been facing children’s nightmares. Now it is time to face mine.”
As she spoke, a dragonfly the length of a friggin’ 747 rose up behind her. Except to call this creature simply a giant dragonfly would be to say that Godzilla was simply an overgrown gecko. You weren’t taking into account his electric breath or supernatural strength (like being a towering beast wasn’t enough). Although I couldn’t yet tell if this DragonFly had either electric breath or superstrength, I could see thousands of little pincers that lined its entire body, each pair of mandibles just mini-versions of the monster’s face.
Hellelujah!
(Sorry, Penemue … but when the catchphrase fits, it fits.)
↔↓↔
I ran through the doorway, over to Penemue and pulled out one of the pins from his wings. It took all my strength, but I managed to wiggle it out. It dropped with a clank.
“Thank you,” he said. “I was getting tired of just hanging around.”
“Seriously?” I said as I struggled with the second nail.
“What, Human Jean? We must find levity in all situations, mustn’t we?”
“I guess. I just wish you’d use actual humor when searching for your friggin’ levity,” I said, still straining to pull out the second nail.
“Touché,” he said.
Clank went the second pin. Now released, he fell down to his knees with a thump. It took all my strength to prop him up.
I pointed at Miral who laid on the ground, groaning from the two wounds I had inflicted on her. “Will she be OK?” I asked.
“In … time,” Penemue responded.
I gestured vaguely to the battle that was raging above. “I can feel me up there. Another me … and he’s way more badass than I am. I can see what he’s seeing … and right now Sinbad, Conner, Judith and OtherMe are getting their asses handed to them.” I looked at Tink, who still buzzed around dodging the anomalies’ attacks. But even from this distance, I could see she was getting tired. “But this me needs help down here, too.”
Penemue looked over at Tink, then me. “You are the Houlm’s guardian?”
“ ‘Houlm’? That word again. What is a Houlm?” I stood, sword in hand.
“Not what. Who,” Penemue said, pointing at Tink. “And Houlm’s identity is a long story for another time. Until then … help the little mythical fairy. I will deal with the other you. After all these years, I’ve gotten very good at dealing with you.”
↔↑↔
As I turned to face the anomalies below, OtherMe stood above, just as determined to meet the approaching carnage with carnage of his own. Before him was Evil-and-Cute and her nightmare DragonFly, but those were far from the only players on the field.
A legion of anomalies poured out of the hatch from the prison below. Given their sheer numbers, I guessed that the children’s nightmares were endless, and that the noise and fear they were currently feeling as they watched monsters chase a poor golden fairy below allowed them to conjure more and more.
Shouf and Milton the cyclops had invaded from the south, coming in on a small motorboat Shouf had borrowed from Army supplies. They had made their way to the stairwell where the anomalies poured out. They stood side-by-side as they battled the monsters, cutting them down almost as fast as they came out and sending a stream of foam back down into the prison at such a speed that the soles of the RealMe’s shoes would soon be slick with monster juice. I guess the two warriors bonded over their unusual eye-situation, because their coordinated efforts were flawless.
If only we could turn off the constant tap of anomalies, I was sure the two of them alone would deal with the impending army.
OtherMe, Sinbad, Aau and Conner, however, weren’t dealing with an army. They were fighting one Occultist and a demon DragonFly. And they were screwed. Aau and Conner tried to knock down Evil-and-Cute, but she was too fast, seeming to anticipate where all their attacks would come from before they could be thrown. I swear it was like she had eyes not only on the back of her head, but everywhere.
DragonFly buzzed forward.
Sinbad, that little fearless warrior, managed to climb the side of the lighthouse, using her daggers as mountaineer’s ice axes. Judith, still drained from her temper tantrum, watched the little girl scale the wall, too tired to protest—but from the expression on her face, I could see she wanted to. When she was high enough, she jumped onto the DragonFly’s back and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, but with each slash, the beast healed itself—just as she did whenever hurt.
OtherMe was weaponless and confused. His mind told him to help Evil-and-Cute, but his conscience told him to help his friends—the people with whom he had bled in the past. With conscience and mind in conflict, he was lost. Unsure what to do next.
Until, that was, OtherMe saw the one Other that tipped the balance. It came in the form of an angel—a drunk, pain-in-the-ass, arrogant and extremely frustrating angel, but an angel nonetheless.
Penemue burst through the door of the lighthouse, the angel’s massive frame crouching to get across the threshold. He flew straight at the DragonFly with all the force of a bat out of hell (I know, I know … cliché, but for once the cliché does what happened, justice). He hit the DragonFly, forcing the creature back several meters, before turning to the rest and yelling, “Conner
, Judith, Aau … Jean needs you below.”
Judith pointed at OtherMe and said, “Jean’s here.”
“No,” Penemue said, dodging the DragonFly’s pincers—all three million of them. “That’s Other Jean. Real Jean is below. Just go … you’ll understand when you get down there.” Then, flapping his massive, dove-like wings, he turned to face the DragonFly. With a voice full of resolve, he pointed at Sinbad and OtherMe and said, “The pirate and I will take care of this thing. You take care of her.”
OtherMe was no longer confused. He knew exactly who the angel meant by “her.”
↔↓↔
I ran into the main area of the prison where Tink continued her annoying buzzing as the Occultists and anomalies were trying to capture her. The three-inch-tall golden fairy panted and heaved in exhaustion. She was slowing down. With each swipe, they were getting closer.
“Tink,” I yelled. “Come back to me.”
The little fairy gave me a thumbs-up and started her way to me. But an anomaly that had a friggin’ tennis racket for a hand—I guess the poor kid dreaming that particular anomaly had been thwacked by one of those—hit Tink square on the back and she went flying, hitting the ground with a thump.
“No!” I cried, and threw my sword like a spear at the Andre Agassi reject. My sword impaled itself in the monster’s head and it started foaming.
Great—one down; only six anomalies, two Occultists and a partridge in a pear tree to go.
I tumbled in Tink’s direction and picked her up. Her wings flickered slightly, but the fairy was out for the count. “Tink … can you merge with me?” I asked.
The battle-weary fairy nodded and I put her to my heart where she went in with a whoomp.
“OK,” I said, picking up my sword. “Who’s next?”
↔↑↔
Up above, I watched OtherMe, Penemue and Sinbad struggle to take down a DragonFly and someone who seemed way too cute to be this vicious. Sinbad was using Penemue’s chains and meathooks as her own personal swing, floating around the DragonFly and taking serious chunks out of it with her daggers. Penemue played his role perfectly, always making sure that he kept the little warrior out of reach of those strange pincers which covered the DragonFly’s body.