by Sawyer Black
Henry stared in awe at Adam’s face as a golden glow filled the cell. Shimmering like the sun streaming through rippling water. Heat at his back, and Henry turned, squinting into the holy glare.
The Tracker that had thrown Henry into the well floated down the corridor, his wings brushing into the upper corners and his hands clutching the black sword that was stained with another angel’s blood. The chains that held him to the service of the Order dragged across the floor, jangling in chiming counterpoint to Adam’s song.
The yellow fire in his eyes reflected off the scars streaking across his face. Puckered skin where Henry’s claws had slashed. He hovered in front of the door, his light tightening Henry’s skin across his forehead.
Charlie hid in Henry’s shadow, while Boothe backed up out of the Tracker’s view.
“Put me down, Henry.”
Henry lowered Adam to the floor, and the child walked out of the cell, his silhouette burned into Henry’s retinas.
Your song has beckoned me forth.
Who here can free me of this torment?
Henry looked at Boothe with his hands spread in a question, but Boothe shook his head. “Don’t look at me. Those chains are under an enchantment far beyond me.”
Adam stood on his tiptoes and laid his hand against the angel’s thigh.
The Tracker’s light dimmed, flowing into the small hand in pulsing flashes. He lowered to the floor, staring into Adam’s eyes. His wings folded in, and he lowered his sword.
Henry blinked the spots out of his eyes. Adam turned with a smile, and Henry smiled back. “Break his chains, Henry,” the boy said.
The Tracker jerked his head up, his eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched, the muscles under his ears bulging.
“Um, I can’t.”
“You can. It’s easy.”
“How do you know, kid?” Boothe asked.
“You are a paladin, Henry. You have sworn to free those who can’t free themselves. There are no chains that can hold against you.”
“Oh.” Henry nodded. “Sure.”
Adam stepped aside, and the Tracker lifted his hands. Henry charged forward with a roar and swung his claws at the chains with all his might.
They shattered like ice.
The Tracker reeled back, and the sword dropped from his hands. He caught his balance and dropped to his knee. One fist over his heart, the other pressed into the ground in front of his feet.
I swear fealty to you.
The booming voice in Henry’s mind held a finality he didn’t care for you. “Oh, fuck no.” Henry pointed to Adam. “Swear to him.”
He is already served by another.
“God damn it! Boothe, tell him. I’m just some fuck-up comedian who you suckered into all this nonsense.”
Boothe spread his hands in genuine confusion. “Henry, I have no idea how to proceed. I believe I was suckered, as well.”
Ezra hopped back into view. “We must go, Master Henry and Master Boothe.”
“Fuck, why is everybody looking at me?”
No answers. Just looks.
“Fine.” He pointed at the kneeling tracker. “What’s your name?”
Ramiel.
“And stop talking in my head for fuck’s sake. It hurts.”
A smile played at the edges of the Tracker’s mouth, and he spoke with his mouth. “I am Ramiel.”
“All right, Remmy. Your brothers and sisters are coming to … do whatever you guys do. They’re probably busy laying the smack down on the Viazo riffraff, but we should heretofore … as to … you know, fuck off.”
“That was poetry, Henry.” Boothe pressed through the door, leaning away from Ramiel as he passed.
Henry shrugged. “We need to get out of here. It’s as simple as that.”
A booming concussion above their heads sent dust cascading down like sifted flour. The fluorescents flickered, blinking back on at half intensity, angry hornets buzzing from their ballasts.
Charlie jumped from the cot. “I got no weapon or nothing.”
“Peterson’s office,” Henry shouted. He spun to find Ezra hopping from foot to foot. “You remember how to get back there?”
“Yes, Master Henry.”
Henry crowded into the hallway and scooped Adam up, slinging the boy onto his back.
Adam held onto his savior’s neck, fingers laced under his throat, weighing nothing.
He charged past Ramiel, giving him a sharp slap on the ass that stung his palm as he passed. “Let’s go.”
They compressed into the stairwell and burst out into the pantry. Henry couldn’t wait to see the expression on the first busboy to see them coming down the hall. Ramiel’s light flared behind them, and Charlie passed in a humming blur of pumping arms and flashing teeth.
Retracing their steps, Ezra led them through empty hallways to Peterson’s office.
The floor shook as Henry crossed the threshold, bucking him off balance. He recovered in time to see Charlie stand with the cultist’s daggers held up in front of him. A swirling mass of entropic energy flowed from the blades to surround his forearms in swirling tendrils. He smiled in appreciation. “Oh yeah.”
Boothe scooped the sword from the floor, and it rang, black wisps of energy radiating from its tip like sound waves.
“There’s nothing for you, Henry,” Adam said in his ear.
“Don’t worry about me, kid. Even the champ couldn’t take me down.”
The floor heaved, and Henry braced himself against Ramiel’s solid shoulder. The lights died, and only the Tracker’s glow kept Henry from losing his direction. The noise of war swelled in the distance. Explosions and gunfire. Shouted curses.
A porter sprinted by pushing a luggage cart on squealing wheels.
Henry cocked his head to listen. “It sounds like fucking Apocalypse Now out there.”
“Great movie,” Charlie said. “Why I started surfing.”
Boothe stepped to the door with the sword out in front of him and peered around the jamb. “Well, Henry. Front or back?”
“Shit, it sounds like it doesn’t matter.”
“The lobby is wide open. Room to swing a weapon. Time enough to see the enemy coming.”
“Or to hide behind this thick slab of angel, here.” Henry turned to look at Adam from the corner of his eye. “What do you think?”
“I think this is the most fun I’ve ever had!”
“All right, then. The front door it is.”
Ezra scampered out in front of them, leading the way. Boothe and Charlie walked in a hurried crouch behind him. Henry followed, and Ramiel brought up the rear with his light making their shadows dance along the walls as they ran toward the battlefield thunder.
They left the hallway, stepping out onto the balcony overlooking the lobby. When they passed the spot where Ariana had announced the auction, Henry convulsed with a shiver.
They pounded down the stairs, and a group of four gun-toting cultists popped out of the darkness at the base of the statues at either side of the lobby.
The two at the front held AR-15s pressed into their shoulders.
Looks like somebody’s been going to the range.
They opened fire, and Ramiel’s light exploded into blinding brilliance. Bullets sparked into the disintegrating fire, and Boothe charged with his sword a blur.
Flames gouted like blood wherever the dark blade touched flesh, and screaming cultists collapsed to ash.
Charlie was a whirling dervish of color. Unable to track him with his eyes, Henry only knew where he’d been by the howls of the cultists as he rendered them into dog food.
A demon rushed in with his panicked eyes and saw Ramiel rise over Henry and Adam, his feet coming out from under him as he backpedaled. Ramiel dropped in an arc that took him to the demon scampering back on his ass. The Tracker plunged the sword down, driving it through the demon and into the floor.
A clap of thunder, and deep cracks spread out from the impact. The demon erupted in a slurry of black blood that wash
ed across the lobby from wall to wall.
“I’ll be honest,” Henry whispered over his shoulder. “That seemed excessive.”
Adam snickered, and Henry grinned.
First this boy, and then Amélie.
They gathered at the front door, and Boothe still didn’t have a speck of blood on him. Charlie was soaked to the elbows. Ramiel’s entire body was awash with gore.
“Fuck it,” Henry said, and he pushed through the glass door into the sudden quiet in front of the Viazo Grand. Wet air slapped him in the face. Drizzle blew in under the overhang protecting the guests as they exited their vehicles.
They gathered under the roof’s edge. A flash of lightning illuminated a group of cultists and demons standing at the top of a rise twenty yards away.
Henry’s group turned as one to run the other way, and the sky filled with the blended light from a dozen Trackers flying over the hotel to meet them. They froze, and the Trackers dropped to the ground to spread out.
Ramiel dimmed his own light, and they all crouched into a tight group.
The Trackers advanced, and their song spread through the rain. They were covered in blood, both black and red, and their nets were empty. Their song sounded like a lie.
“Back inside?” Henry asked. Golden light descended the staircase. “Motherfucker!”
“Henry,” Boothe said. “You must get the boy away from here.”
“What, just run away?”
Ezra took Henry’s hand in his. “Yes, Master Henry. Take the lamb far away.”
“I can’t take him into the shadows with me. His destiny is too Goddamned heavy.”
Charlie leaned over. “Then use your fucking feet, shithead.”
Ramiel nodded. “They have served you well thus far, Master Henry.”
“This is bullshit.” They were right. Until he could free Amélie, Adam was all that mattered. He reached back and pressed a steadying hand against the boy’s backside, then ran in a crouch to the wall, facing the cultists and demons on the hill.
He turned back to his companions, “If any of you fuckers die on me, I’ll find you. And you’ll be sorry.”
“I’m already sorry,” Charlie muttered.
The Trackers drew their weapons. Henry squinted into the darkness at the cultists. “They don’t have a fucking chance.”
A red glow spread across the hill — maybe he’d spoken too soon.
In the center of the glow was the cultist who disappeared from Peterson’s office. Swirling fire flickered from his hands. Hellish light sparkled off the rain. The ground shook, and the Trackers slowed.
The red-robed leader threw his hands into the air, and fire rolled down the hill, arcing from his fingers in sizzling waves.
Shadow demons erupted from the ground in every direction. Screaming with the voices of those they had tortured in hell, they threw themselves at the trackers. Their feet left burning spots of lava as they passed.
They swarmed over the angels like hyenas on a carcass, and the cries from the hill drowned out the screams of the Trackers as they fought.
The demons and cultists charged down the hill to end the battle in a rout, but the glass wall of the entry exploded in a shower of sparkling shards as the Trackers inside the hotel burst into the night to defend their brothers and sisters.
Shadows shooting from the ground, trailing dripping fire. Slobbering demons running with weapons raised. Robed cultists firing semi-automatic rifles. The horizon glowing red with evil light. Trackers wasting hoards of the enemy with mighty strokes of righteous intent.
Henry’s group crouched in the chaos, their backs to each other and their weapons raised. Boothe turned, slinging rain from his eyes. “RUN!”
Henry dug in and sprinted with his head down. The explosion behind him when the armies met under the Viazo Grand’s carriage porch seemed to shake the world. It knocked him to his knees to skid in the mud, but he held onto Adam and pushed back to his feet.
He heard Ezra’s scream of pain, and he ran.
Boothe’s bellow of rage, and he pumped his legs as Adam bounced wildly on his back.
Ramiel’s song turned from comfort to vengeance. And still, Henry ran.
First this boy, and then Amélie. I’m coming, baby!
The fighting receded into the distance behind him, and the ground flattened out before him. He ran faster than he could imagine, the wind deafening as it whipped past his ears.
The rain soaked through his clothes in seconds, and Henry only knew he was crying when he tasted the salt of his tears.
Chapter Thirty
At the edge of the Viazo Vineyards, Henry slowed and turned around, walking backwards into the trees that lined the hotel property. Flashes of light at the top of the hill. Muted thunder. Swells of color. It looked like fireworks, or a Phish concert.
“I’m sorry about your friends, Henry.”
“Don’t be sorry yet, kid.”
Henry pulled Adam off his back and cradled the boy in his arms, holding him against his chest and blocking as much of the rain as he could. He tried stretching into the shadows, but Adam became an albatross. He couldn’t keep them in the trees for much longer. They were on the edge of a huge city. The trees would end, and everyone would see the monster. He reached for the darkness again, but instead of pouring himself into it, Henry pulled it up like a blanket across his shoulders.
The mental weight of Adam’s presence in the shadows dragged his shoulders toward the ground, but Henry gritted his teeth and kept planting his feet.
He couldn’t tell how old the kid was. He was so small, but he’d spoken with an odd assurance that made him think of Amélie. She was a negotiator, wielding logic like a rapier. He learned to prepare for situations of discipline like a lawyer trying a case. It didn’t matter if he won, so long as he didn’t end up looking like a dumbass.
More often than not, she would end up with a snackie cake instead of punishment, and Henry would sit at the table with a shell-shocked sort of pride, wondering how the Hell she’d gotten so smart so fast.
She became obsessed with Giggly Girls, a line of knock-off Barbies that laughed when shaken. He thought they all sounded like cackling harpies, but Amélie loved them, swiping through the website on Henry’s iPad for hours. Her collection was soon obnoxious, and it had been a constant struggle for him to get her to clean them up.
It may have been her toy room, but Henry paid the bills, so one day he put his foot down. Five minutes later, he was sitting on the floor with a tiny pink brush, gently removing the tangles from Precious Paula’s red hair.
Samantha had stuck her head in. “Clean your toys up, please.”
Without argument, Amélie put everything away in record time. Henry looked up to realize he was alone, and the room was spotless. Her little voice floated in from the kitchen, chattering away about how she and Daddy had played with her dolls all day.
He stood with a grimace, his hips popping like twin shots from a cap gun. Then he hobbled over to Amélie’s toy box and spiked that Paula bitch into the pile.
Her hair had looked incredible.
The rain tapered to a thin mist that seemed to appear rather than fall, and the trees thinned to an occasional weed-choked clump. In the tall grass next to the Thompson Turnpike, Henry followed the traffic south-west, cutting through Sheldon and Harbor Square.
His feet knew where to take him, and the boy was asleep in his arms, so Henry kept his head down and the shadows pulled tight against the reflected glare of headlights and streetlamps. He pushed the sound of Ezra’s scream way down, covering it with a memory of Amélie’s smile.
He looked up, and his vision cleared his daydream in a haze of reality. The Burg Spires Church of Hope. The shadow fell from his shoulders, and Henry gasped in relief. Standing under the dripping leaves of a maple tree, he looked both ways like a child readying to cross the street.
The church rose out of the gloom, dark except for a single light at the side door. Only familiar with a few of the
rooms inside, Henry couldn’t tell how they translated to the building’s exterior.
A final check to make sure the coast was clear, and he carried Adam to the front door.
Heavy plastic covered the hole where the stained-glass window had been, fluttering and snapping with the swirling mist. Adam stirred and lifted his head to look over Henry’s shoulder.
Ready to draw the shadows around them again, Henry rounded the corner and mounted the front door steps.
The handle turned, and the door swung in on silent hinges. Henry carried Adam inside, half expecting to be heralded by trumpets or light, but nothing happened. He closed the door behind him with a soft click then passed out of the entry and down the center aisle toward the altar.
He sat Adam in the first pew and turned to look at the damage from Peterson’s entry. It was even worse than the day of the massacre, but at least there wasn’t any blood. Pastor Owen’s tired face sprang into his mind, and Henry burned with guilt. “I’ve brought so much pain to that man.”
“Who? To him?”
Henry turned, and Adam was pointing at the statue of Jesus hanging above the empty baptismal pool. “No, that’s Jesus.”
“Oh.” Adam nodded, a line appearing between his eyebrows. “I’m supposed to be him.”
“Huh?”
“Well, maybe not be him, but be like him?”
“I guess, kid. That’s why God wants you.”
Adam jerked his head up in surprise. “God? Wants me?”
Henry shook his head and sat in the pew across the aisle. “It depends on who you ask.”
Adam nodded. “Some people say I am him, already.”
“Or the Antichrist.”
Adam nodded again. “That, too.”
“Yeah, well, people are dumb.”
Adam giggled, and then his face grew serious. “Can I trust you?”
“I think so, yeah.”
Adam pushed off the pew and walked over to Henry. He stood peering up at him, gold and blue light flickering in his eyes like sparks. He reached up and touched Henry’s face.
Memories from the last few months flooded into his senses. Every moment relived with Henry at the center. The awful things he said. The terrible things he had done. Samantha and Amélie. Their pain doubling against his own.