Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  And with that I left the room, praying that the two of them would come to their senses and knowing that there was nothing I could do.

  I wondered if Michael would give me a pass on this, too.

  Fighting Yourself Hurts

  I headed to my room, wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed. But instead of finding my room empty, Marc was sitting there holding Spock in his hands.

  Spock. My Spock.

  My Spock that I bought with PopPop when I was twelve. We drove for three hours to find a toy store that sold him, stopping for burgers and shakes both ways! It was one of my favorite pieces, not just because I was a Trekkie, but because of all the memories wrapped up with it.

  “I’ve just been through Hell. I lost Bella—again—and my best friend will probably die today.” I cracked my knuckles. “But for reasons I’m sure are completely irrational, seeing Spoke in your hands makes me angrier than the other stuff by a long mile. A long fucking mile!”

  And then I did something I wasn’t particularly proud of … I sucker-punched, well, me.

  OK, I lied. I was proud I managed to get that shot in. After all, Marc was me, so he should have known exactly what I would do in a situation like that. It was his fault he didn’t anticipate it, and his loss he didn’t think of it first.

  Marc went down hard with a thud, but before I could say “Haha,” he was up and on his feet, one fist in my gut.

  I keeled over, using my somewhat prone position to push him into the wall. He hit it with a thud and then the two of us really got into it. A proper street brawl, complete with punching, kicking, hair-pulling and name-calling.

  “You can’t beat me,” Marc said. “I am the better, stronger version of you.”

  That really pissed me off, but he did have a point—I was fighting myself, which meant I needed to do something that I wouldn’t do in a fight. I waited until Marc lifted his leg for a kick, and grabbing the Magic 8-Ball on my shelf, I pounded it into his skull.

  Him, being me, assumed I’d never use one of my precious collector’s items as a weapon. But I did, and that’s what threw him off. I pounded the 8-Ball until the plastic cracked and blue dye splattered all over him. Then I pounded him some more, driving its ragged plastic shell into him.

  I hit him until his eyes glazed over and I knew I had won. More importantly, he knew I had won.

  Breathing heavily, I stood over Marc, having defeated myself. Seeing me beaten was really quite something—humbling and enthralling all at once. It kind of reminded me of Enter the Dragon, when Bruce Lee faces himself in the final scene of the movie. In that story, Bruce Lee has finally learned to make peace with his own demons.

  In my story, I just beat the hell out of the asshole in me. And being super mature about it, I kicked my—I mean, his. Ahhh, it’s all so confusing—ass again.

  Marc groaned at the last little jab. Looking up at me, the bastard smiled, his normally white teeth framed by blood. He looked downright terrible … and I realized that’s exactly what I looked like when I got my ass kicked. Yikes, I really needed to work on my wounded look.

  “Very good,” Marc said, pulling a piece of plastic out of his forehead. “And you have left me with a few wounds that will hopefully scar.”

  “Hopefully?”

  “So people can distinguish us.” Marc chuckled. “You really did beat me. I didn’t think you could. You’re filled with so much … hesitation. Self-questioning. Doubt. I don’t know how you can function the way you are.”

  I took a seat next to his prone body. “You act like doubt is a weakness—”

  “It is.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s what guides me. Helps me know that I’m doing the right thing. It’s what makes me … me.” Offering a hand to my fallen self, I helped Marc to a seat on the couch beside me.

  Marc shuffled onto the couch and spit out blood on my marble floor. I would say it was gross, but that was exactly what I would have done in his shoes. But seeing it made me realize that I had a lot of bad habits.

  I looked at the blood and spittle. I’d have to take a mop to that.

  Then turning to my other self, I sighed. “Here’s something I’m not conflicted about: you’re going to have to leave.”

  Marc nodded. “I know.”

  “And never come back.”

  Another nod. “I know … I know. I’ll go.”

  “Where?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I sighed. “No, it doesn’t. But since I doubt you have a destination in mind, I thought I should mention something I found out. About our past. About our dad.”

  I told him the story with every detail I could recall. Marc listened intently and when I was finished, he nodded and without a hint of doubt said, “I’ll find him.”

  “You’ll try. And whatever comes of it, I don’t want to know.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “You speak without doubt. It’s so … unlike you,” Marc said, as if genuinely surprised at my answer.

  “I made peace with not having a father long ago. And I have enough pain in my life to not add to it.” As I spoke those last words, my mind drifted to Bella.

  By the GoneGods, I’ll find a way back to you, I thought, knowing there was another thing I had no doubt about. I would find a way back to her. In this life or the next, I would.

  Looking over at Marc, I put a hand over my throbbing left eye. “Whatever you find out, I don’t want to know.”

  Marc gave me another curious look. “Very well … I won’t return. And when I find him, I’ll make no attempts to tell you what I discovered. This I promise. And given that we share so much, you know what those words mean to me. You know how serious I am.”

  I nodded, then thought about Penemue and all that had happened. “Amend that. You won’t tell me unless some greater need compels you to.”

  “Greater need?”

  “Yeah. Being in Hell taught me something about oaths … you need a loophole. You always need a loophole.”

  “Humph, Hell was good for you, Jean-Luc. And yes, I agree. I won’t return, nor will I share what I discover unless something greater than the two of us compels me to.”

  “Good,” I said with a chuckle. “Right now, I can’t think of what that greater need could be, so I’m confident I’ll never see you again.”

  Marc flashed me another blood-filled smile. “I don’t know, there’s so much to fix and so much that could go wrong. Still, my return would constitute something epic. Terrible. Earth-shattering. Sometime like—”

  “The gods coming back.” I flashed him a blood-soaked smile of my own.

  “Something exactly like that.”

  “Good, then we’re in agreement and there’s nothing more to say.” I gestured to the door. But as Marc stood to leave, I knew that there was one more thing to say. And as much as I hated the son of bitch who was, well, me, I owed it to him (and in some mind-bending, existential crisis-causing way, to me) to tell him.

  “Marc,” I said, “there is one more thing. And as much as I will hate myself for telling you, I’ll hate myself more for not telling you.”

  “Ahh, there’s the conflicted, always-debating-himself Jean-Luc I know and love.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Whatever. Listen, in Hell I found out some shit about my—um, our—father.”

  “Different than all the shit you just told me about him?”

  “Yes,” I said, “different is one way of putting it.”

  And I told him everything I knew.

  ↔

  There was very little ceremony in what happened next. Marc just picked up his jacket and left. No more words shared between us. No more thoughts. Hell, he didn’t even look back at me.

  He just walked out of the hotel and toward the grounded warbird. Stepping inside, he clicked on its mighty blades and took to the sky. I wondered where he’d go. And knowing myself, I could guess … because if I ever got exiled from the only place I cons
idered home, I’d probably go back to the only place I knew would still have me.

  The Army. My old unit.

  Then again, I might go looking for the Others who abducted our father.

  But as much as Marc was me and I was him, I couldn’t be sure that was where he’d go.

  All I knew was what I needed to do: keep my promise. Stay here and help as best I could. That, and find a way back to Bella. She was out there, alive and well—OK, dead and well.

  We could be together again and I’d move Heaven and Hell to find a way.

  But thinking about Bella also made me think about Medusa. She was back and from everything I could see, she was broken. I needed to help her, too. Even if that help meant leaving her alone so she could heal without her feelings for me getting in the way.

  Shaking my head, my last thought before crawling into bed was of Penemue and EightBall. I truly hoped that they would come to their senses. Part of me wanted to run back to their room and stop whatever horrors might or might not be taking place. But I knew that stupid lug of an angel was determined to let EightBall have his revenge.

  Or mercy.

  Too exhausted to do anything, I got under the covers. I didn’t even check Optimus to see what Penemue was on about. Either some magical item was in the damn toy, or it wasn’t. Getting up now wouldn’t change that, and I needed to rest because tomorrow … tomorrow would be filled with new challenges. I had two friends—dear friends, whom I loved very much—who were hurting, and I knew I’d do whatever it took to help them back to who they once were.

  Entering my room, I took off my shoes and, still wearing clothes with the stink of Hell on them, crawled into bed.

  I needed sleep.

  More than anything in the world, I needed sleep.

  But alas, it seemed that fate had conspired against me. Any hope of sleep was destroyed with a single rap at my door …

  Part XXI

  Changes

  Miral walks into Jean’s room. The human is exhausted, ragged, near collapse.

  As a doctor, she knows this man needs rest, but as a friend she needs him now more than ever. She wears a new coat that she has bought from a Salvation Army thrift shop; it is several sizes too large for her slender frame.

  Jean looks up, sorrow in his eyes as he sees his friend enter. Sorrow … and guilt, for Jean carries the heavy burden of knowing what he did to her. Jean remembers how he hobbled her, thrusting his blade deep into the bone that connects her wings to her back. She will never be able to use her angelic wings to take flight again.

  He did it because he had no choice. He had to hurt her or die.

  But the lack of choice does nothing to lessen his guilt. As justified as his reasons were for hurting her, they don’t matter. An angel is meant to fly, and to deny her—his friend—such a thing places an immense burden on his heart.

  “I’m … I’m so sorry,” he says. “If there was any other way, I’d—”

  Miral lifts a silencing hand. She knows his guilt, his remorse … and she has forgiven him. He had no choice, she tells herself. He did the right thing. She has made peace with what he has done. She is no longer angry.

  Miral sighs. “Medusa the gorgon rests in the hospital. Already she speaks of rejoining the police force. Her spirit is resilient. You should visit her.”

  Jean nods, unsure if that is best thing for him to do, but unwilling to contradict the angel.

  Miral takes in a deep breath. Summoning an immense will worthy of Hercules, she holds back a tear. “I am no longer angry, but I have not yet forgiven you. That you must earn by helping me now, Jean-Luc Matthias.”

  She has invoked his full name. Miral only uses one’s full name in moments of great need. Jean knows whatever she is mean you can be moreabout to ask of him now is serious. Deadly so.

  “Anything,” he says, trying to stand. He is still too weak to do so and the strain taxes his body to the point of collapse.

  Miral lets him struggle. Perhaps she is still a little bit angry at him. “You say that now”—the angel holds the coat tight around her, hugging herself as she does so—“but what I have to show you might change your mind.”

  “Anything,” Jean repeats, his tone unwavering.

  Miral knows he means it with all of his being.

  The angel’s eyes light up with more trapped tears. “When I studied to be a doctor, I specialized in the human reproductive system. I did so because I lied to myself and said I wanted to help humans with their most sacred responsibility … children.”

  As is Jean’s way when things are serious or dangerous or both, he jokes, “Be fruitful and multiply, huh?” He chuckles at his own joke.

  Miral lifts a warning hand. “Not the time.”

  Jean nods apologetically. “Sorry.”

  “As I was saying, I studied the subject because of a lie. The truth was, I secretly wished to see if there was a way to reverse the gods’ cruelest demand on us when they left: our own inability to have children. Others cannot reproduce and once our lifespan is over, so too will our species die out, never to return.”

  “I know,” Jean says solemnly.

  “So I studied and prayed and studied some more to see if there was a way for our lineage to continue … if not for all Others, than perhaps for some of us. Do you know what I found?”

  Jean shakes his head.

  Miral gives him her back, continuing to speak in the same solemn, distant tone. “Nothing. We simply do not have the necessary biological constructs to have children of our own. This is true of angels and elves, dragons and yetis, and every other species of Other. We are all barren, and nothing short of a miracle can change that.”

  “And miracles left with the gods,” Jean says. Nothing about his tone betrays anything but absolute seriousness.

  “So it seems,” Miral says, removing her coat. “But then again, maybe not.”

  Miral turns to reveal her belly. It is ballooned and full, pronounced in a way that can only mean one thing: Miral, the angel of Heaven-turned-doctor, is pregnant. “Jean-Luc Matthias,” she says, her voice overflowing with joy, “it seems that at least one miracle still walks amongst us.”

  (Not) The End

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  MORTALITY BITES

  TODAY -

  Death was coming. There was nothing the old librarian could do about that.

  But he could deny this monster some satisfaction.

  “This will not bring the gods back,” the old librarian said. “Nothing will bring them back.”

  The monster ran a gloved hand along the old man’s cheek. “Come now, Father Dewey … or is it just David now? You know better than anyone why they left. We disappointed them.”

  “We didn’t disappoint them,” David muttered. “The gods … they just left. That’s all. You must see that.”

  The monster gave a final tug on the ropes to ensure they were secure before walking past him. “No, you’re wrong. We turned our backs on the old ways. We forgot the fundamental rule when appeasing the gods.” The monster spoke low, absentmindedly as it browsed the library’s rare-items display. It paused at the item it wanted, touching the cool glass with a light, casual finger. The monster’s lips crooked up in satisfaction. “This modern world, with its iPads and unlimited data … has forgotten that this—all of this—is because they willed it. Without the gods, we would be monkeys picking the ticks off each other’s backs.”

  With one powerful, angry fist, it shattered the display glass and, pulling the ancient obsidian blad
e from its stand, the monster caressed its tip. The blade was sharp, eliciting a tiny stream of red blood where it tore into flesh. “Blood. We forgot about blood. It is the essence of true worship.”

  Approaching David, it held the blade aloft and muttered ancient, ritualistic words.

  “You don’t have to do this. It is not too late to reclaim your humanity,” David said, but he knew his pleas were useless. He’d read the history books; he knew what these old rituals entailed. The fear and suffering of “that which is sacrificed”—him—was part of it. According to the texts, the harder the victim held on to life, the closer attention the gods paid. Mustering the last of his pride, he closed his eyes and went still.

  The monster opened its eyes. Lifting the ceremonial knife high above its head, it cried out an ancient incantation that no human ear had heard in over a thousand years.

  As the blade punctured his heart, David uttered a silent prayer, not for the gods to intervene—he knew that was useless—but as comfort in his last moments. After all, before he was a librarian, he was once a priest. And old habits? Well, old habits die hard.

  Two Days Earlier -

  My dorm room door was open, which could mean only one of two things: I was being robbed or my roommate had finally chosen to show up.

  The semester didn’t start until tomorrow, but I’d arrived a week early to check out my new living digs. An old habit—necessary when you’re a vampire living in secret among humans. Of course, vampires weren’t a secret any longer.

  And I was no longer a creature stalking the night. Though, that said, technically it was night, and I was returning from another one of my scope-it-out strolls.