“Six blocks west, please,” Mr. Jay said to the driver as the taxi pulled away from the curb. Dawn squeezed his hand until he looked down at her.
“That was exciting!” he whispered.
12 – Lots
Sister Cawood’s tongue snaked over the brown skin at the nape of the Mormon representative’s neck. The Mormon did not return the favor, opting instead to kiss the pale flesh between her breasts. Sister Juanita Powell was an attractive woman of pre-Change thirty years. Her long black hair, threaded through with silver fell in ringlets, perfectly framing intense brown eyes. The couple had become close friends fifty years into the Change when Karen had attended the San Sebesta Inter-faith Christian retreat near the rim of the New Mexican Crater. They’d become lovers three decades later when Powell was assigned to administrative duties in the Archangel Tower Mormon Offices. The affair was a close-kept secret—and the orgasms more intense because of it.
Powell was in love with Cawood so overlooked the nun’s interest in men. Cawood loved Powell, but lacked the courage to tell her the full extent of her interest. Powell was a lesbian. Cawood’s tastes had yet to be fully defined. There was no agreement between them, but Cawood knew from their late night talks that too much information would crush the Mormon. So she lied every time they met.
But she depended on Juanita’s insights, and found the Mormon’s beautiful body responsive to her every touch. Able’s visit and Cawood’s hangover left her useless for work—half an hour of staring at her coffee cup said as much. At ten she’d taken an elevator to the Mormon’s office to talk. Able had dredged up the past, and Cawood needed a distraction. But Juanita smiled impishly and started kissing her the moment she entered. A passionate exchange brought them back to the Mormon’s apartment and they had been making love for an hour. Cawood was distracted all right. The physical tastes and sensations pressed in on her. She dove so deep into her lust that she almost snarled when Juanita stopped her.
“Hey!” Juanita blurted, closing her thighs over the sister’s neck. “Let me catch my breath.”
Cawood looked up, her vision foggy; then she smiled. Straining, crawling upward, she pressed Juanita’s lips and their tongues met. They rolled over the bed, giggling in a pink embrace.
“You aren’t feeling guilty are you?” Juanita said, still sporting the traces of a Spanish accent. She rolled a fingertip around the sister’s hard and rubbery nipple.
“No. Never—anymore.” Cawood lied. “I’m sorry—I got caught up. You’re so beautiful.” Her hands slid over the Mormon’s full hips—dallied a second between her legs. A wave of passion rolled over them. “It’s Able, he came in with another crazy scheme.”
A hot emotion flitted behind Juanita’s eyes. “What now? He wants to put on an addition?” They both laughed. Building the Tower had consumed the lives of everyone involved. “A carport?”
“No,” she giggled. “Able loves the tower.” Cawood’s mind rolled over the notion. “So do I. It’s not that.” The sister remembered Able’s earnest face. She realized how important this was to him. How important their spiritual intimacy was. He trusted Cawood. “He’s just getting revved up again.” Juanita’s body went rigid. The Mormon’s hand clasped on Cawood’s wrist.
“Can’t he bother someone else?” She shook her head. “I like Able, don’t mistake me. I do. But always he goes to you.” She kissed Cawood again, her body softened. “What does he want now?”
“I can’t tell you.” Cawood sighed. She ran her hands over Juanita’s soft shoulders. “I want to. I do. But, he trusts me so much.” And he shouldn’t!
“Don’t you trust me?” Juanita’s eyes glimmered. “I won’t tell.” She patted the bed sheets, slid her hand over Cawood’s vulva. “You trust me with this.”
“I know, Juanita. I do.” Her breath caught, and she closed her eyes. This was what it was all about—relationships: the sharing of trust, of intimacy, giving and receiving access to the soul. But it was God’s. It was the Holy Mother’s. I’m so fucking bad. A desperate part of her mind searched her memory of Juanita’s apartment. Liquor, there had to be liquor. “Able won’t trust just anyone. And he trusts me.” Why not tell? Her mind snickered. The whole thing’s a joke!
“I like that about you.” Juanita’s warm spirit returned and they shared a kiss. “I guess he does too.”
Cawood remembered first meeting Able. She had been on a personal revival of sorts, after falling far from grace fifteen years after the Change. She had tried to blame the difficulties with her vow of chastity on the fact that the Change apparently halted her aging process, leaving her in the body of a young woman for far longer than any nun ever had before. Before long she stopped blaming anything at all, and dove into the erotic world of human sexuality. Vows and chastity were thrown to the wind, and she had cavorted with any interested man or woman.
God had left her behind with the sinners, so she would sin. But, she hit bottom after going on a drunken binge with two men she met at a Catholic sponsored conference on Poverty in the World of Change. She woke up naked in a hotel bathtub. As she hurried to leave, she discovered one of the men was dead from an overdose of barbiturates. Cawood was already struggling with the new realities of dying and the thought of becoming one of the walking dead was too terrifying. And for a time, she was scared straight. For a time, the fear brought her back to her faith.
She took this new passion for life to the lost souls in the streets of the City. They would shuffle out of their despondency long enough to listen to her loving words about God and faith, and while salvation was rare, she spoke the Word of God, and speaking it gave her the strength to remember her vows.
She spent the following years praying with ragtag groups of the lost and homeless, and revived her Bible studies. She worked at mission houses and shelters. Cawood even began to think that the Word held the answer for the Change—a reply to its dark challenge. Trials defined a person’s faith. And understanding the trials became her passion.
While working at a methadone clinic on Level Two she stopped on the street one day to speak to a group of forever-teen addicts who hung around looking for handouts. They’d given her the predictable guff, but she had hope for one of them who had hesitated before walking away. As she bent to retrieve her bag, a man stepped up to her. He was tall, blue-eyed and wore a deeply creased frown on his face. “You have Faith, Sister! Hallelujah!” Then he blushed. “I hope you don’t mind. I overheard what you said to those poor unfortunates.” He continued to blush. “Inspiring.”
“Thank you, sir.” She had studied his demeanor. His head was large, his visage somewhat wasted. “God’s love is the answer.” She gave him a longer glance. “You’ve accepted this, brother?”
“I have, and share the message with all His world. And I shall ever strive to do so. This darkness assails us from the outside and we must not allow it into our hearts. The sun no longer shines on us from above so those of us who remember it must remind our brothers and sisters who have forgotten. For the Light remains!” His thick lips moved expertly around the words.
“Sometimes they only see the clouds that cover it,” she had said, the man’s gaze was open and honest.
“That is why my mission is to building a shining beacon for all the world to see. A Lighthouse of Hope so the storm gripping the world will claim no more of our brothers and sisters on the rocks of despair. We must light the way.” He reached out a hand, and she clasped the warm flesh in hers. “I have seen the passion with which you speak. And you speak while so many are silent. That tells me there is a will to live inside of you, and a will to live is evidence of hope. I need that hope if I am to accomplish what I struggle so long to do alone. Sister, let me tell you of my mission for it comes Heaven sent, and I can carry this only so far alone. I think you will agree that there is but one choice for us.”
And Reverend Stoneworthy had told the sister of his mission. All of it: his fall from grace, the Angel and the Tower. He had already done much work, and the pla
ns for the Tower construction were being drawn. But resistance among the gathered faiths slowed things. With her help he could expedite this mission. So compelling was the light in his eyes, so seductive was the passion of his revelation that Cawood saw this as a penance for all, and so she committed herself to the difficult task ahead.
She dove into the work like a heaven sent shower and scrubbed herself clean with endless meetings and protocol. Together, with the help of like-minded people of God from the four-corners of the earth, they labored to raise the funds to build Archangel Tower, and in its construction—they believed—the introduction to the manifesto for salvation.
And they succeeded. Combining their passion for God had made them unstoppable in their ability to influence and innervate. Gradually, the Tower grew slowly at first, growing in speed with each passing year—as its magnificence was understood. For as the structure grew, so also did its image as a beacon of hope. Stoneworthy’s mission became the mission for all. Within Archangel’s thousands of rooms would be headquarters for the world’s religions. Theologians would be called there to study the Change, to divine its meaning. Archangel Tower reached out to God.
Dark waves of guilt buffeted Cawood’s mind. Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Pity Your afflicted ones.
“Hello?” Juanita’s face moved close; a smile played at the smooth corners of her mouth. “I hate to interrupt.”
“I’m sorry.” Cawood smoothed her hair. “Just thinking.” Damn it, Able.
“Well, you just snuggle in here.” Juanita’s lithe body pressed hot and close. “I’ll try to get your full attention.”
Cawood felt a tingle run through her body from the base of her spine to her breasts. “You’re so sweet.” Her nipples rubbed the Mormon’s. “I’ve just had an idea.”
“What could that be, Sister Cawood?” Juanita’s hands explored her belly. “Oh, dear, I must thank Able. It is pleasant being your distraction.”
And as they embraced, Cawood fled from her lies and her faithlessness. She immersed herself in sin until it felt like drowning.
13 – Employer from Hell
Felon hated the cold. The chill wind that tore at him rode the crest of a Winter rain. The frigid weather system was plowing through the day like a glacier, dire and destructive. Its impact diminished or increased in relation to your location in the City. The City population created heat and certain elevations in the Levels trapped it. The metropolis had its own environment, and it all revolved around humidity and the dispersal of water dropped by incessant rains. The middle Levels were warmest, the upper Levels, ironically, the driest and the lowest, were the coldest. The damp air flowed downhill.
The assassin pulled his overcoat tight around his chest and spat a curse. Of all the sensations, cold was worst. He hated the cold because he couldn’t prepare for it. They could forecast the temperature, but they’d never be able to tell him how cold it would feel. And the Change made it entirely unpredictable. He couldn’t even count on seasons. His business depended on speed and sensation. He couldn’t afford to be constricted by thermal underwear and wool suits. Gloves were out of the question.
Felon clenched and unclenched his bare hands like he was strangling the air. The fingers were numb; but the gripping action moved the blood and kept them supple enough to work the .9 mm automatic in the large front pocket of his overcoat. He was on his way to meet a Demon. Instead of his client’s luxurious Level Five office, he’d been given instructions to meet in the basement of a six-story parking garage on Level One—which had to be one of the coldest places in the City.
He parked his rental car two floors up, and descended the rest of the way on foot. He’d be an easy target in a car within the cramped confines of a parking garage. A pedestrian couldn’t be parked in and gunned down.
Felon took no chances. His client had exceptional taste, followed the rules of the Unholy Compact, and dealt fairly in the past. But he was a Demon, and by his nature unable to easily accept restrictions. The Unholy Compact was a book of laws that balanced off the equation of the Bible.
Fallen followed the letter of the Compact like jailhouse lawyers, convicts who studied law to force their own release. Knowledge and command of all the loopholes in Cosmic law was a driving force in their Infernal lives.
Demons were ungoverned twists of passion, and subordinate to Fallen for that very reason. They paid lip service to the Compact, but were not bound by it. They adopted affectations of sophistication to counter the perception that they were subordinate. A Demon once explained that they were powerful beings that predated human civilization. They evolved alongside humanity from dim dark beginnings and were around before the Egyptians, the Romans, or the Stone Age Britons invented their complicated religions. Ancient humans actually begged them to play God. The association corrupted them all eventually. The arrival of the One God created a psychological self-destruction felt by all.
This God and his followers called Demons evil, and cast them in the Pit. But something must have happened to the One God, because the Change came and ended their long period of bondage. The Angels had returned, and Fallen walked the earth in little disguise. But the Unholy Compact remained as an ancient agreement that all feared breaking in case that brought the One God’s return.
Felon was meeting with Baron Balg, a powerful Demon who claimed to be three thousand years old. He paid well. Balg’s personal assistant, Senji Shaiko had set up the meeting and its location.
Felon uncurled his hands and nonchalantly dropped them into his coat pockets as he walked down the ramp. His numb fingers rested on his gun.
A figure stood at the far end of the parking garage, shadowy in the dim overhead light. Balg wore a black broad-brimmed pimp’s hat with a long scarlet trench coat. Red and white wingtips protruded from beneath dark purple trousers. A calfskin glove covered the hand that twirled an obsidian walking stick. Long curved ram’s horns arced through the brim of the Demon’s hat. His eyes had an amber glow that flared a deeper red when he caught Felon’s gaze.
“My dear, Felon.” His voice was harsh and gravely. His face though human, had bestial qualities: broad nose and wide mouth full of sharp tiger’s teeth. A fringe of dark hair followed the underside of his jaw. “Sorry for the short notice!” Neither of them wasted time on a handshake.
Felon nodded. Demons liked to intimidate. Since Balg could take any shape, the assassin knew he had left his horns on for a reason.
“Felon...” The Demon’s features fell as the assassin approached. “You look exceptionally grim today.”
Felon twisted his lips, hating the small talk.
“Cold?” Balg gestured with his cane and a ring of foot-tall flames grew up around them, colored them with passionate red light.
Felon snarled. It was foolish to make an obvious show of force when their meeting place had been chosen for secrecy.
“The City is bothering you, no?” Balg’s features twisted with concern.
“Irrelevant.” The assassin fished in his coat pockets for a cigarette. He lit one.
“Relevance is relative,” Balg said. A cigar appeared in his hand, lit and smoking. He took a deep pull on it. “A revelation for you, perhaps?” He laughed low and coarsely.
Felon’s back warmed from the ring of flame.
“Oh, can’t we drop this sad back and forth? We’re friends. Let’s talk like friends!” Balg smiled fiercely.
Felon said nothing. His face was stone.
Balg’s features dropped as he studied the assassin’s face, and then broke into a toothy grin. “You are a fucking snake. I offered the sign of friendship. Please feel free to take me up on it at your leisure.” Balg straightened, both hands resting on his cane. “You have worked for me before and completed each task with your painstaking professionalism. You’re the best in the business.” The Demon stepped smoothly forward, reached out to slip a hand under Felon’s elbow and then thought better of it, drawing him on with a nod of his head. “
Of course, you’re the only one in the business.” The ring of flames broke before them as they walked, the fire now tracing a path on either side. They crossed the slush-covered garage floor.
Felon drew in on his cigarette.
“And normally, the objects of my disaffection are of the human or...” He smiled and pointed upward with his cane. “Other variety. But, I have a special job I would like you to take care of that involves a competing organization.”
Fallen. Felon thought. Whacking Fallen was dangerous. They had no allegiance with their own kind and had little to do with each other. Put Fallen out of the way: wash a partner out of the firm. Bump someone off that occupies space in the chain above you, or someone who is busily climbing below—the ends justified the means every time. Business was harsh in the Infernal world, and few would seek revenge for a dead competitor. But, all Divine creatures felt the transgression of a mortal stepping beyond his place. And like it or not, they were Fallen, and had fought the Great War against Heaven. Felon would be a fool to think that there were no quiet alliances, and no chance of revenge. It was big money.
Balg’s massive brow wrinkled. “I didn’t quite catch that. You must forgive me but you were thinking about something there, and I almost caught it.” He chortled. “You force me to read body language!”
Felon’s stomach tightened. Balg was testing him.
The Demon chuckled. “Mirgeth, a Fallen of some power, has taken it upon himself to fall rather lustfully for a certain young human woman, with whom I have similar intentions. Unlike myself, he tries to win her affections with lust. He has for some time been sending her an Incubus to tend to her physical needs in her sleep. Such attentions are dangerous to a mortal, for there is no satiation for the Incubus. He will always please her, for he himself will never be pleased.”
“Who does Mirgeth run with?” Felon shook his head.
“A freelancer formerly with Lucifer,” Balg said and smiled with yellowed carnivore teeth. “Don’t misunderstand me, my wolf. Mirgeth isn’t the target. This is family business. I want you to hit the Incubus who has been rather successfully foiling my attempts to woo the young maiden. With him prodding her every fucking night, why send flowers?”
The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two Page 7