by Jaxon Reed
She whipped around to bat them down, but she wasn’t fast enough this time. Two of them caught her in the chest, knocking her to the floor.
The newcomer reached Sleaghan and bent down over him. Sleaghan raised his arms up.
“Brother . . . save me . . .”
He pulled Sleaghan up into his arms and they both disappeared in another flash of golden light.
6
“What in the blue blazes was that? What’s going on? Who are you? Where’d youse come from?”
Capone could see again, and he paced around the room ranting, demanding answers. He waved his arms in agitation, fat fingers shaking excitedly.
“Wipe him, Cait, and open us a door.”
A vertical crack of neon light appeared, quickly growing wider. Booker spied familiar bluebonnets through the portal.
Capone collapsed suddenly, falling backward on the sofa.
Booker said, “Is he alright?”
“He’ll be fine. He won’t remember a thing. Come on, give me a hand through the door.”
Booker turned back toward Ms. Tiffany Valor. To his shock, he saw the midsection of her dress had burned away, and a gaping wound stretched across most of her stomach.
He jumped into action and gently guided her through the blue doorway, out into the field of flowers.
Cait stood there in human form, waiting. As soon as they were through, she picked Tiff up in surprisingly strong arms, and headed down the path toward the door to Headquarters.
Booker followed, but Cait called out without turning around.
“Stay here, Mr. Booker. I’ll provide you a seat.”
A lounge chair appeared suddenly to the side of the path. Booker stopped and watched Cait disappear with Tiffany over a little hill. He looked back to the blue-green vertical sliver leading to Capone’s office and watched it shrink, then close and wink out of existence.
He shrugged, and settled down in the chair to wait.
-+-
In her dream, Tiff knew she was fifteen years old. The Walker trained her in the gymnasium inside Headquarters.
He said, “You’ve been learning martial arts, and that’s good. You need to learn how to fight dirty. There are five major points where a human body is especially vulnerable in a fight: the crotch, the knees, the neck, the eyes and nose area, and the stomach and kidneys area. What we’re going to learn today is how to take advantage of those weak spots in a much larger opponent.”
He turned toward one of the gym’s dark corners and cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Come out here, Buster!”
A huge, shambling man emerged from the far shadows of the gym, slowly making his way toward the center. He stood about seven feet tall, and looked like he weighed close to five hundred pounds. Rolls of fat jiggled as he walked. His thick neck supported a grotesquely large head, featuring an extraordinarily ugly face. Thick lips protruded from a mouth full of crooked, yellow and broken teeth. Hairy moles spotted his face, neck, and upper body. His hair looked oily, as if it had never been washed. His body odor reeked strong enough to wilt flowers.
Tiff stared at him in horror. She could smell him long before he drew close.
“Did you make this?”
The Walker smiled and said, “Yes, for training purposes. Buster is designed for one thing only: to beat up. He’s your practice dummy so you can learn how to defend yourself without actually injuring a real person. Now, don’t let him get you or he’ll try to kiss you. That’s the penalty for losing to Buster. I understand his breath is horrible.”
Buster spied her across the gym and grinned maliciously. His tongue came out and he moaned lasciviously while picking up his pace.
“That thing is horrible! It’s a caricature. Nothing’s that bad in real life.”
The Walker said, “You’d be surprised what you can find out on the alternates, especially those that deviate a lot from OE.”
As Buster drew nearer, he added, “Careful, don’t let him touch you. Buster loves to grab pretty girls.”
The ugly behemoth came within arm’s length. It stared down at her chest and reached out for her breasts.
Tiff swung her foot out in a karate kick, connecting firmly with Buster’s crotch.
“Urgh!”
When he doubled over, she kicked into his face, the top of her booted foot crushing his big nose.
“Yargh!”
He collapsed in a heap on the floor. She jumped on his ample neck, coming down on the side in a glancing blow, but enough to choke him and make Buster gurgle as he struggled to breathe.
The Walker looked at Buster, collapsed in a pile of fetid, quivering flesh with blood pooling around his face.
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“Hm. Maybe we don’t need to worry about training you much on fighting dirty. I think you’ve got it, Tiff.”
-+-
“Tiff?”
She opened her eyes to see Martin staring down at her, and she smiled. She really enjoyed looking at Martin. He smelled good, too. He seemed especially refreshing after dreaming about Buster.
Sitting up in bed, she gently felt her midsection. Most of the pain was gone.
Martin held out a glass for her, filled with green liquid.
“Cait says finish this one, and you’ll be good as new.”
She nodded, took the glass and had a few sips. Then she climbed out of bed and mentally changed her clothes. Her white nightgown disappeared, instantly replaced by cut-off blue jeans, a red t-shirt, and matching flip-flops.
“She also says your friend is still in the Wildflower Room and should probably head home soon.”
“Omigosh! Darius!”
She hurried out the door, through her courtyard and the outer door. She jogged toward Cait’s desk, running past the computer’s human representation, and opened the rowan door to the Wildflower Room.
Tiff hurried down the path and made her way back to where Booker sat dozing in the lounge chair.
He woke up when he heard her approach, and stood up smiling. Then he frowned when he saw her clothes.
“What are you wearing?”
“Oh! Sorry.”
Instantly, the dress she had worn in Chicago reappeared.
He frowned, still confused by the clothes. Then he saw the glass of green liquid she carried.
“What’s that?”
Tiff looked down at the glass and her eyebrows shot up in surprise. She had forgotten about it in the rush to get here.
“This is a type of tea.”
“A type of tea? What types are there?”
“Well, this is a drink brewed from certain leaves. Not tea leaves. Other kinds of leaves.”
She paused to take a few sips. Then she wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
“I have to drink this to take care of my injuries.”
Booker nodded, trying to process the information. She hadn’t shown her midsection, and he would never be so bold and ask to see, but he suspected it had healed up nicely.
“You recovered a lot faster than I did. I think I’ve only been out here a couple hours. That is, assuming time moves at a normal pace here. I’m not quite sure what to make of everything, yet.”
“Oh yes, time moves normally here. We can adjust when and where we go back to the alternates, though. That’s how we were able to heal you up here for a while then bring you back to your apartment a few minutes after you left.”
Booker nodded, still trying to understand things.
“So, in reality, I’m actually a couple days older than the calendar says I am.”
“Well, yes. If you want to think of it that way.”
“So, I’ve essentially been robbed two days of life.”
She gave him a lopsided smile.
“You could have lost your life altogether, Darius. If I’d left you there after Sleaghan zapped you, you would have. Don’t think of it as losing a couple days, look at is as being able to live longer than you otherwise would have.”
He nodded, slowly, then looked back at the drink.
“So, what’s the drink made of?”
“The tea?”
“Yes. What kind of leaves? You said it’s a type of tea but not made from tea leaves.”
She sighed, wondering how much he would understand, or even believe.
“It’s made from leaves belonging to a Tree of Life.”
He stared at her for half a minute, to see if she would smile or laugh. She stared back, meeting his eyes levelly.
“You mean like, from the Bible?”
“Yes.”
“And you have access to the actual Tree of Life.”
He said it as a statement rather than a question.
“Well, not the original one. But there are several. In the afterlife, presuming you go to heaven when you die, you get a new body. And you live forever. Your body doesn’t grow old. It doesn’t catch diseases. But, on occasion, you might get injured like I did. When that happens, we consume the leaves, or part of the leaves, from one of the Trees of Life. It restores us, fixing anything hurt or broken. Things like that.”
She paused to finish her glass and stifled a burp.
“You can consume it in a variety of ways. Some people even put it in ice cream. I like to drink it as a tea, personally.”
He scratched his head, and watched as she held the empty glass off to one side and it disappeared from her hand.
“So, what would happen if I drank it?”
She chuckled.
“Oh, we’d never let that happen. Not while you’re alive, anyway.”
“But what if I did. Hypothetically, what would happen?”
“Well, you don’t want access to the Tree of Life while you’re in a fallen state. That’s why only resurrected people consume it. They’re no longer fallen, no longer cursed.”
He put aside the parts of what she was saying he couldn’t understand, and latched onto something he thought he could.
“So, you’re resurrected? That means you’ve died.”
She nodded.
“When did you die?”
“Oh, it was a long time ago.”
“How long?”
Cait spoke up in her mind and said, “Eight hundred and thirty-eight—”
“Shut up, Cait.”
Out loud, she said, “A few centuries ago. It’s not important. What is important right now is that we go back and deal with Sleaghan, and this other fae who has entered the picture.”
“You mean that thing that spirited him away?”
“Yes. It’s rather unusual to see cooperation between them. Not unprecedented, but unusual.”
“Why?”
“I’m not entirely sure. They don’t seem to like their own kind very much. They don’t like anybody very much, but they seem to get under one others skin. So for the most part, over the last several centuries, we’ve mostly found them stirring up trouble among the alternates by themselves.”
“Seems like there’d be more strength in numbers.”
She shrugged and said, “Who knows why fae do the things they do? I don’t try too hard to understand them. I just kill them and move on.”
Booker’s brows furrowed as he continued trying to make sense of her statements.
He said, “You can kill them? What happens when they die?”
“What do you mean, what happens? They die and go before God and face judgment, just like everybody else.”
“So do they get resurrected like people do? Like you did?”
“No. And not every person gets resurrected, either. They had to have accepted the deal God made with their world while they were alive. In every alternate he sets up a representative sacrifice by becoming a person himself and dying for everybody’s sins. If a person accepted the gift of his sacrifice while they were alive, they’re saved on Judgment Day from the second death.”
“Second death?”
She nodded.
“After judgment, those who accepted God’s gift go on to eternal life. They don’t have to pay for their sins because they accepted the representational sacrifice while they were living. God’s human self already died for them on that alternate.
“But the fae fight so hard because they know the second death awaits when God judges them.”
“There was no . . . ‘representational sacrifice’ made for the fae? They can’t be saved from the second death?”
She shook her head.
“The fae are subject to the same terms as angels. Those who rebelled reaped the consequences. Of the angels, a third rebelled. They were all cast into the ‘lake of fire’ following Original Earth’s Judgment Day.
“But practically all the fae rebelled against God. That’s how bad they are, and that’s what we’re up against. Slowly but surely, the few of us tasked with bringing the fae to judgment are fulfilling our duty, and sending them to God’s throne to meet their fate.”
Booker sat down again. He crossed his arms and stared at the wildflowers, deep in thought.
Tiff sat down beside him, on the arm of the chair.
She said, “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I know about angels, of course. And I understand basic Christian concepts. My granny made sure I went to Sunday school when I was a boy, although I haven’t been much since. I accepted ‘the deal,’ as you put it, when I was in grammar school. But I have never heard anything about these fae creatures before.”
Tiff nodded sympathetically and said, “That’s not surprising. They were barely known on O-Earth, where everything started. And that’s probably because most of them scattered throughout the multiverse shortly after Creation.
“But a few stayed behind and a handful of people on Original Earth came to know them over the centuries, in one way or another. Most of what people learned quickly grew shrouded in myths and fairy tales.
“Some elements of the truth survived, though. Scotland and Ireland somehow managed to find themselves in the center of the fae universe. Some of their oral traditions transmitted the knowledge of fae and how dangerous they are, passing nuggets of information down as folktales.”
She glanced over at Booker and noted his eyebrows were firmly knitted together.
“Oh! I see I’ve lost you.”
He nodded, and said, “I’m afraid our Scotland and Ireland have no such tales. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
She waved it off and said, “It’s not important. All you need to know is they are extraordinarily powerful and dangerous. This particular one who calls himself Matt Sleaghan will not give up until he corrupts your world and unleashes whatever chaos he’s bent on.
“I’ll stick around. Since you’re close to Capone, and Sleaghan seems to have chosen Capone for some reason, I’ll stay nearby and wait until he shows up again.”
Booker pulled himself out of swirling thoughts of evil fae and an original Scotland and original Ireland with different folklore, and focused on the attractive, blue-eyed Ms. Tiffany Valor.
She was staying! Finally, she said something he fully understood.
7
The truck pulled to a halt, brakes lightly squealing in protest. Headlights cut through the gloom, dimly illuminating an old farmhouse sitting in the darkness, its shutters keeping out the night.
The driver exited and made his way to the back of the vehicle. He rapped on the side, then lifted up the cargo door. The humble van’s exterior disguised a luxurious inner passenger compartment. Inside, Ralph and Al Capone sat in leather seats, an empty bottle of scotch between them. Two henchmen stood in the corners, smoking cigarettes.
Booker hunched down in the third seat, his tie loosened, with a sour look on his face directed at the smokers.
The driver pulled out a collapsible set of steps attached to the undercarriage, then moved out of the way. The goons exited first, glancing to the right and left before giving quick nods to the Capone brothers.
“Wait’ll you see Ralphie’s new venture, Book. Yer gonna be i
mpressed.”
Booker cleared his throat while standing up, grimacing at the sting from the smoke in his throat and nostrils.
“Thank you, Mr. Capone. But like I said back at the office, I’m a deskman. I don’t need to see the operations, I just need to know their numbers.”
Ralph, who stood taller and thinner than Al, slapped the accountant on the back.
He said, “You’re ‘family,’ Book. You should see this. C’mon, you’ll enjoy it. It’s Friday and the night’s on us!”
Booker’s shoulders sagged, and he silently acquiesced. The brothers had waylaid him when he headed for the elevator at five o’clock. They insisted he accompany them. Reluctantly he had agreed, and followed them out a back door and into the rolling office hidden inside the van.
“I didn’t know we owned anything like this,” he said, glancing back in awe at the cargo bay’s interior. The space was decked out in expensive carpeting, leather chairs, a small campaign desk, and a fully stocked bar.
“Sure,” Al said. “It’s listed as a truck for the dairy.”
Booker shook his head, partly in wonder, partly in curiosity about how many other items in the budget were not labeled correctly.
He had been looking forward to another delightful evening with Ms. Tiffany Valor, who reappeared in his tiny apartment every night after work to discuss the day’s events. There had not been a lot to talk about, so far as the Outfit’s business, and there had been no sign of Sleaghan in the two weeks since she had fought him. Often their conversation turned to other things.
Her life, or afterlife as he now understood, had been far more fascinating than his humdrum existence. He cajoled her to share stories. She had over 800 years of adventures stored up, and he eagerly listened to all her tales.
Mostly, she confessed, she enjoyed going back “home,” to the headquarters he knew lay beyond the small hill in that field of wildflowers. She spoke of it with longing, although he suspected she enjoyed the people there more than the location itself. She shared quite a bit about Jason, their leader, and Booker felt the stirrings of what might be a touch of jealousy. It seemed obvious she adored Jason, although he deduced their relationship was not romantic. Surely if it were, he reasoned, she would have revealed it by now.