by Zoe Forward
Instead of a swift death into nothing, he flew airborne. Another body landed hard on top of him.
“Can’t breathe,” Roman wheezed out. “Get off.”
“What the actual fuck, Roman?” Flynn asked above him.
“Get off me. Why’re you here?” It came out slurred to his ears. He hadn’t had that much to drink…or had he? Maybe it was the fact he hadn’t eaten anything in… He remembered a few Jaffa Cakes yesterday. An empty stomach would make alcohol ten times as potent in spite of his rapid metabolism.
Who cares? He excavated the Smirnoff and unscrewed it.
Flynn swiped it from him. “You’ve had enough.”
“Gimme that.” He reached for it but slipped and landed on his knees.
Flynn held it high. “Shit.” He dodged the incoming scythe swipe.
Roman grabbed Flynn and dove with both of them behind a stone column.
Roman said, “You’re s’posed to stay outside. Do visibility…invisibility…whatever. You keep us out of human sight. Cameras and shit.”
“My Spidey senses tingled with warning you were going to do something epically stupid.” Flynn pushed him away when he reached for the bottle again. “You reek. I can’t believe you’re trying to do this while drunk. This is going too far.” Flynn dragged him into the shadows and gripped the front of his shirt to pull him upright. With a furious shake, he gritted out, “Do your job. Get rid of that thing before it realizes it’s in a crypt surrounded by dead things it can turn into zombies to make this… Aw, crap.”
The phantasm chanted in a melodic language he didn’t understand. It waved its translucent arms at the crypts around them. Stone shuddered.
“It just got a clue,” Flynn said.
“You gave it the idea by saying it out loud. Seriously, how long have you been doing this?” Roman waved to show off the ensuing chaos. “It hadn’t thought about it until you gave it the idea.”
“This is why I stay outside,” Flynn muttered. “It’s about to get nasty in here.”
Marble tomb coverings shook in several locations. Cracking noises echoed around them as a few skeletal remains emerged covered in tatters of ancient clothing.
Flynn said, “This should’ve ended twenty minutes ago. If I knew the spells, I’d have sent this thing back to the underworld, but they don’t work right for me. Now World War Z is kicking off.”
“You can do it. This is good practice for you. Cast the freeze spell. Take its weapon and send it back where it belongs. Here.” He removed a cloth pouch full of dust necessary for the spell.
Flynn’s eyes bugged wide, and he waved his hands. “No, no, no. I can’t remember the spell. I’ll mess it up.”
“You’ve heard me do this a zillion times. No better time to give it a whirl than right now. I suggest doing it fast before the corpses really wake up.” He recited the spell. “Go. You got this.”
Flynn took the bag and tiptoed toward the ghost.
Roman sighed. Flynn had to move faster and do this with confidence, or it would never work. “The spell. Now.”
Two corpses jumped on Flynn. He dropped the bag, whirled around, and dislodged the skeletons.
“Someday.” Roman sighed and batted away an animated skeleton. He swiped the bag off the ground. The bend-down to get the bag sent the world into a mind-numbing spin with no center of gravity. He caught himself on the slippery stone column and hugged it until the whirling settled. He held up a hand when Flynn moved his way. “I’m good.”
Ten animated corpses moved in various states of crawls and hobbles between them and the ghost. All jumped at them at once with scores more emerging like ants from a disturbed mound. Both of them fought with a knife in each hand. Flynn did good. But Roman’s half-drunk swipes lacked finesse.
As awkward and ungainly as the corpses seemed, three scratched Roman in a matter of seconds with wicked swipes down his arms. The pain didn’t register. He remained frustrated by his inability to focus and get the job done.
He double blinked as more zombified corpses headed his way. Move before they get close. A few steps and he stumbled backward against the stone column again. He put the bag of dust in a pocket.
Do this.
With a knife in each fist, he took two deep breaths, which did exactly jack shit to clear his head. He charged the four skeletons lumbering his way. As he clumsily took them apart, a fifth charged, went to its knees… He saw the hit coming in, but his body wouldn’t move out the way. Felt like a bag of rocks straight to his nuts. Pain leveled him to his knees. One skeleton jumped on his back and tried to break his neck. Roman surged upward and backward, ramming the creature on his back into the wall over and over until the skeleton dislodged. More skeletons charged, swarming him.
From nowhere, a tall figure dressed in black from head to toe moved faster than he could blink, eliminating the zombie corpses all over him. The guy in black didn’t just disarticulate them but turned them to dust with the touch of his curved copper-color sword.
“Who the hell’s that guy?” Roman asked when Flynn moved in to stand back-to-back and fight.
“I don’t think it’s human, but who cares? It’s keeping those things off us.” Flynn pushed him forward. “Move.”
Weaving his way back to the ghost was like being on a merry-go-round of dizziness and trying to gauge the right moment to step off. Two animated corpses grabbed his ankles, tripping him to the ground because no way gravity wasn’t getting all of him. Flynn fought behind him, keeping what he could away.
The ghost emitted some sort of noise he assumed to be a laugh. Didn’t that just piss him off?
With his knife, he sliced off the hands of the corpses holding him down and got to his feet, skeleton hands still clasped around his ankles. In his peripheral vision, he saw the guy in black whipping around the room in a circle around him to keep the things clear of him. He wondered if it was Antonio dressed in black. Didn’t smell like him, but his nose was overwhelmed by the smell of decaying zombies.
He shuffled back toward the ghost. Once within distance of it, he steadied himself and threw the dust of a crushed phylactery, a Greek protective amulet, at the creature. While it sputtered and acted as if the powder burned its head, Roman intoned,
“Goddess and Hekate save help me now
To see the truth here not yet found,
For underneath the fog of immateriality lies truth.
Let that which is insubstantial be as in life,
And by the power that is three
So as I will it, so mote it be.”
The ghost flickered from vaporous form to solid. Roman hobbled forward—because a graceful lunge was out of the question—to wrangle the scythe from its hands. When it came free the weapon’s unanticipated weight caused him to slip around on the floor like a newbie ice skater until he regained his balance. By the grace of a miracle, he managed to swing the scythe in the general direction of the phantasm’s head. Swing number two decapitated it.
It returned to vaporous form and dissipated. The scythe in his hands also disappeared.
All animated corpses turned to dust.
“Is it gone?” Flynn ducked to avoid shadows as he scanned around, suspicious. He held his knife ready.
The person in black froze.
“Nobody move.” Roman held up a hand, demanding silence. He was one-hundred percent sure the ghost was gone, but no one showed up unsolicited to help them. No one knew about them. He planned to find out who’d crashed their show. And why.
He removed a white crystal on a chain from his pocket and let it rock back and forth over the area the ghost vanished. He moved steadily closer to the person in black. Palming the crystal as it completed its pendulum swing, he put a hand to the chest of the interloper and pressed backward until he was against the wall.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
The
man threw his hood back and let his robes fall to the floor. For an instant he was Cooper. Then, he was enveloped in a brilliant white light that streaked his hair, which had suddenly morphed into a thick ponytail. He straightened out of Cooper’s habitual slouch, growing taller, then broader. And something—make that two somethings—sprouted from his back. Two wings unfolded in a dazzling shimmer of silver, fanning out spectacularly behind him. His Black Panther T-shirt and faded jeans remained, oddly enough.
Roman shuffled backward, tripping over his own feet to land in a sprawl on the floor. “Zadkiel?”
Flynn snapped his mouth closed. It took him a moment to be able to form actual words. “You’re real? Roman said you helped him last year, but I thought he just snorted some magic dust or something and hallucinated.”
Blue eyes with a violent fire pinned Roman as the angel tucked a few strands of long dark hair that had escaped its binding at his neck. In a clipped Spanish accent, he said, “You guys have the most bizarre job.” He scanned the mess of corpses on the floor. “Those things were horrible, by the way. The smell alone in here…” He pinched his nose.
Flynn said, “Chasing and destroying evil assholes is hard.”
In his most perfect Tom Hanks impersonation voice, no trace of an accent, Zadkiel said, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard…is what makes it great.”
Roman compressed his lips against a smile, the first semi-mirth he’d experienced in weeks. If there was one thing about the infamous Archangel of Mercy and Surrender with his unannounced appearances, he was distinctly…uncool. His love of Avengers T-shirts and the odd movie star impressions were usually not considered trademarks of a timeless agent for God. When he did the impersonations, what made it hilarious wasn’t an angel quoting A League of Their Own; it was the fact he couldn’t stop looking to see if Roman enjoyed his impression, and then he couldn’t stop smiling when he saw that he was.
Zadkiel held out his hand to help Roman stand. Once Roman was on his feet, the angel said, “You need to sober up.”
“I’ll get right on that,” he said sarcastically. “I’m thinking I’ve done about enough in my life. About time it ended.”
“I don’t fight stinky corpses for just anyone,” Zadkiel said.
“I appreciate your help. Flynn was about to have his ass handed to him.”
“Hey, I was holding my own just fine.” Flynn kicked a corpse near him. “It was you who gave up and forced me to step in.”
Heat flushed through his body as he ground out to Zadkiel, “You killed Nova. It was you. How could you? She was innocent.”
“Was she? Are any of you truly innocent? Not sure that’s a valid argument. It’s not why you’re angry and falling apart.”
He rushed Zadkiel. The angel caught him with a single palm to his chest and pushed until he pinned Roman against a stone column.
The angel leaned in close to rasp out, “Being drunk and perched on the pity pot, isn’t you. You’re so much more important than you think in the grand scheme of things. Yes, you, Roman.”
“I don’t want to do it without…” He added on a barely audible whisper, “Without her.”
“This isn’t a choice. I’m sorry. You have skills that are necessary to do a job no one else can. I’d venture to guess this type of chaos is par for the course, but…” He worked his jaw back and forth. “How many people would’ve known to use that spell?”
“Humans? None. Witches? Maybe a few. I’m pretty sure that phantasm was a witch’s conjuring mistake. Flynn knew the spell. He just needs more practice so he doesn’t freeze up.”
“I don’t want to be responsible for spell casting and the hands-on weird-ass magic stuff,” Flynn said.
“Get off me.”
Zadkiel took a step backward.
“I didn’t ask for these skills or to be able to inherently know spells or for any of this.” Roman glared at him. “Are you…were you Cooper all this time?”
He nodded. “Figured it was an easy way to look in on what you guys were up to and see the ones who were after you.” The angel sheathed his knife. “It was her choice. There was no other way.”
Roman gulped air, feeling like a spear had pierced his chest.
“Your abilities were given to you for a reason.”
“By God? Your god.” It was hard not to hate Zadkiel, but he had been following Nova’s wishes—and the wishes of a higher power. The thought didn’t make it hurt any less. “I’m really not sure how I feel about a deity forcing me into this.”
“There’s no such thing as free will for any of us. There are simply gradations of control you have over your life.”
“Well, that’s a ringing endorsement to keep going in this hell. You think one of those gradations was that I could’ve decided for Nova not to die? Instead, I could’ve been the one to go?”
Zadkiel dropped his head and shook it. “She was slated to die. I’m sorry. You and she connecting…that was unexpected. Pull yourself together and go back to doing what you do. Do it the right way, not drunk. I’d almost figured out who was selling you out to the A.W.L. and who set you up to die at that place in Belgium, but I had to get out after that Nova thing. Kind of blew my cover when that other guy…I might’ve punished him.”
Roman huffed. The other guy getting disciplined wasn’t enough. It didn’t heal the hole in his chest.
“You have to figure out who’s breeding lycans, and if there are other countries that have already acquired their own personal lycan soldiers. This has to be done while you still work for the ones you’re cursed to answer to.”
“The king is a self-centered jerk.” He hissed and rubbed the burn around his wrist. Then held it up as if talking into it like a phone. “He is, so piss off.” He glanced up to find Zadkiel’s eyebrows drawn inward. “So I talk to it like it’s a parasite? It is. You like us because we make your job easier, but I’m done with this. Even the drive to do it because it’s the right thing isn’t enough anymore.”
“She died so you could live. She recognized your significance in the world. Now you honor her memory by turning into this disaster who’s going to get himself killed?”
“If I have no free will, and the higher-ups have plans for me, then apparently I’m not going to die no matter what I do. Am I able to die?”
“You’re a real pain sometimes.” Zadkiel pinched his nose. “Keep behaving like this, and I think they might decide you’re not worth keeping around.” In a blink, the angel disappeared.
Roman whirled around. “I hate it when he does that.”
“We have to get out of here before the service upstairs lets out.” He waved around him. “Do we have to clean up?”
“Screw it. They can assume grave robbers happened or something.”
When Roman didn’t move to leave, Flynn hauled him up the stairs and out the side door.
“Let me go. I’m going to find a pub. Drink until I can’t remember.”
Flynn stepped in front of him. “Not tonight. We’re going to Mykonos for our full-moon pickup. In…” He rotated his watch. “Eight hours. One of those hours will include a shower for you. I think it’ll be me doing the flying today, which is scary as hell.”
“I’m not going tonight.”
“Like hell you’re not. You can take a knockout pill or drink yourself into oblivion at Mom’s place because you have to survive full moon night alone. I’m not leaving you here to find some new level of insanity. Last time you got desperate, you turned yourself green.”
“I thought we weren’t going to speak about that ever again.”
Flynn barked out a laugh that degenerated into a deep belly guffaw. Roman’s lips twitched upward.
Flynn wiped at his eyes. “You totally went Wicked Witch of the West green. I’m never letting you forget. I got pictures that I can’t wait to show Ky.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I just wish I’d succeeded in getting you to sing ‘Defying Gravity.’” Flynn doubled over laughing.
Roman glared. “I don’t do musicals.”
Flynn’s humor dissolved.
Roman sighed and slumped against the side of the church. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Flynn. I’m tired of killing things like that ghost because someone else says I have to.”
“Not arguing against the fact we’re due for a solid vacation. But, do you believe that ghost in there should’ve been left to live and torture more people?”
He dropped his chin and shook his head.
“There is no one else to get this done. I need your head in the game. At least until we don’t have to answer to His Royal Assness. Are you paying attention to me?” Flynn slammed his fist against the wall outside the cathedral’s side door. “This is Shane’s job to do the pep talks and get us back on the ethical straight and narrow. But he’s not here. He’s probably gone for real and that vampire’s playing us. There’s only the two of us right now. Ky is counting on us to figure out where he is. If you continue this self-destructive path, then I’m as good as dead. And so is Ky. You get that don’t you?” He scrubbed his face. “I don’t know half the stuff you do when it comes to actually practicing magic. The spells just come to you. You often know what to do like it’s some sort of superpower.”
True. Often the solution to deal with a tricky fiend flitted into his brain, which was freaky, even though he constantly studied authentic spell books and books about ancient creatures. That didn’t mean his brothers were helpless, though. “You never wanted to learn. All you need to know is in books. Why do you think I read all the time? For fun?” He released a sarcastic laugh. “I’ve got ten spell books on the plane. They’re a bit advanced, but you could start there.”
“I can’t memorize stupid rhymes and shit. I’m good at tech and keeping us invisible. I’m good at logistics and can break into almost anywhere. But the real stuff…the stuff needed to stay alive and face off these things, isn’t my strength. I tried it. Remember? Twenty years ago?”