by Brian Fuller
To his surprise, Prescilla had already returned from ‘getting up to speed,’ and they walked together to a small auditorium where Cassandra would teach a class entitled “Acting Normal.” They took a seat near the back. Prescilla, still a bit wide-eyed at the magic of phones and lights and water fountains, appeared much more at ease than she had at their first encounter in the cafeteria. Her brown eyes sparkled like a child’s for whom the world is brand-new. She had refused to wear pants, choosing instead an outdated gown from the bowels of the Wardrobe and Disguises Department.
“Cassandra is your private instructor because you’re a Blank, correct?” she asked. “And she is to train you to act like some sort of spy?”
“That’s the plan,” Trace answered. Cassandra was already there, overseeing the setup of a table on the stage.
“I’ve heard some rather unkind things about her from a few of the Ash Angels,” Prescilla whispered.
Trace nodded. “She’s really tough.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant to convey.”
“And grumpy.”
“Not that, either,” Prescilla said, leaning toward him. “Did you know that two weeks before the Blank Massacre, Cassandra up and quit the Ash Angels?”
Quit the Ash Angels? “What?”
“Oh, it’s quite true, I assure you. There was some kind of mission that went poorly, and she quit. But that’s not the worst of it, I’m afraid.” Prescilla’s voice dropped lower. “Rumor has it that the massacre could not have happened without help from someone within the Ash Angels.”
Trace scrunched his face, remembering what Lear had said about a mole.
She continued. “Ash Angels can go bad, you know, or perhaps you don’t. I forget that you missed some of the introductory classes. Free will is still active for us, you see. Now, if an Ash Angel goes bad, their aura turns red like that of a Dread. But if the traitor is a Blank—”
“There is no aura.”
“So, you see, some feel she was a bit put out about something and helped orchestrate the Massacre. Some say Blanks shouldn’t be trusted at all, not just her. No offense, of course. But Archon Ramis, who, I am told, has a particular interest in the handsome Cassandra, trusts her and brought her back into service—to train you, apparently. Did you know Ramis is her Ash Angel father?”
“No.”
The information was coming too fast. His solo training with Cassandra had deprived him of some juicy gossip. With the presentation about to start, Prescilla reached into a canvas handbag by her feet.
“Do the two of you talk at all?” she asked. “It is apparent this is all quite new to you.”
“She’s not much for small talk.”
Prescilla pulled out an embroidery ring, needle, and thread as Cassandra fastened a wireless mic to her tank top and ordered silence. “It helps me concentrate,” Prescilla explained as she resumed stitching a design of a classical angel with wings and a halo.
“All right, Cherubs, listen up,” Cassandra began, her tone that of a drill instructor. “Life inside Trevex has been all milk and cookies for you to this point. It’s fun to change appearances and fart and stab each other with pencils because it doesn’t hurt, but these gifts are given to us for more than our own amusement. So enjoy them all you want, but if you’re not careful you’ll end up watching your heart get yanked out of your chest just before a Dread drops you in the deep end of a pool.”
“Quite the charmer, that one,” Prescilla mumbled under her breath.
Cassandra continued. “Here’s the deal, folks. You don’t have to breathe or bleed or sweat. You don’t feel pain. You don’t get cold or hot. Your skin and teeth are so flawless they look photoshopped. The longer you’re an Ash Angel, the easier it is to forget to do the little things that ensure every person on the street thinks you are just as normal as they are. This is especially important during fieldwork. I’m looking at you, Jarhead!”
Half the class craned their heads around. “It’s Trace,” he corrected flatly. How long would she keep up this jarhead crap? Of course, his Marine Drill Instructors had a few names more colorful than Jarhead to throw at him. Jarhead wasn’t so bad, considering.
“The good news is that you can still do all the things you need to do to act normal. You can bleed on command, you can sunburn yourself, you can breathe and sweat and shiver. But all those things that came to you automatically or involuntarily before come by specific choice now. And yes, we are going to have to teach you how to fake things like injury and death. But let’s start with breathing . . .”
Breathing and blinking and sweating all came easily, and Trace enjoyed the lesson until he realized that Cassandra’s earlier offer to let him help teach the class meant she got to use him as a target for an enthusiastically swung sledgehammer.
Smiling in her own particularly wicked way, Cassandra ordered him down to the stage and began removing some fearsome implements from a long dark duffel bag on the table. Trace had never taken acting classes, so when his trainer unloaded a sledgehammer onto his unsuspecting knee, his bewildered surprise elicited snickers from those not put off by the sickening crunch of shattered bone and his leg sticking out at a weird angle.
“Oh, come on, Jarhead!” Cassandra mocked. “The shock was passable, but the agony just isn’t there! You’ve got to show pain. Writhe! Yell! Swear! You played football, right? Didn’t you ever get hurt?”
He’d sprained an ankle and bruised a rib, but never had his knee caved in. “Sure, but—”
“Try to remember it. And this goes for all of you. All the things we’ve been teaching today were normal for you at one time. Getting them back is just a process of remembering. If you get cut with a knife and forget to flinch and bleed, or if a truck runs over your foot and you act like you stubbed your toe on a mattress, suspicions will arise. The initial shock and flinch are crucial! Let’s try this again, Jarhead. Think about those football injuries.”
A sledgehammer to his pelvis was next, followed by cutting injuries, dislocations, and burns. The Cherubs finally seemed to realize that the gruesome mutilations hadn’t really harmed their victim and settled into a morbid enjoyment of Trace’s violent dismantling. Some started making requests such as “Hit him in the face,” and Cassandra was more than accommodating. By the time Cassandra had finished with him, he looked worse than when Lear had run him over with the car.
While a tad humiliating, Trace believed—though not with a lot of conviction—that Cassandra had good motives; as a Blank, he needed most to be able to act normal. He would be the one sent into Dread-infested territory, and the Dreads, apparently, had wizened up.
Unfortunately, he never could get a good, believable scream to come out. Cassandra suggested he stick to writhing and yelling profanities. Once Trace ran out of body parts for Cassandra to smash, she and the rest of the class retired to a gymnasium so that everyone could take turns beating on each other and faking pain. Cassandra left him in a shattered heap on the floor. He wondered if some crew would come to scrape him up with a flat shovel and dump him in a wheelbarrow.
Prescilla saved him.
“I’m the first in the class to get a Bestowal,” she announced proudly, dropping to her knees beside him. “It just so happens to be one that might prove particularly useful right now.” She looked slightly uncomfortable with his gruesome state, but she closed her eyes and with a pale hand reached out and encircled his wrist. The aura around her increased slightly as she concentrated. Slowly, his body knit together. Joints and sockets reunited with a pop, burns cleared away, and bones and flesh joined together like new.
“There you are, Trace,” she announced, pleased with herself. “All mended.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Trace said as he got to his feet. “Let me walk you over.”
She took his arm in the old-fashioned style. “Thank you kindly.”
“So how did you get your Bestowal?” he asked as they exited the auditorium and walked down a wide hallway toward the gy
m. “What was it like?”
“It announced itself as a vision, actually, and a feeling of rapture. I was in a less-than scintillating lecture on Ash Angel protocol and reporting when I suddenly felt as if I were in a dream. I saw you there on the platform alone and broken, and I approached and healed you just as I did now. I informed the instructor, and he told me what it meant and that I was the first he knew of to receive the vision out of this group.”
“Lucky for me. Thanks again!”
“You are quite welcome. It is a very satisfying gift. In my former life I worked on the Underground Railroad and had the opportunity to lend my meager healing skills to those unfortunate souls fleeing north. I hope I can do much good with what I have been given. I admit to having been a bit unnerved with this whole business at first, but I confess I feel as if a great burden has been lifted from me. The excitement is getting the better of me now. I apologize, Trace. I am getting a bit carried away.”
“No worries.” He smiled. “I’m still in the unnerved stage. Have they told you about Spirit Shock?”
“Yes, they did. Quite horrible!”
“It happened to me last night,” he said, hoping it didn’t sound like bragging.
“Really? You poor dear! What happened?”
They entered the gymnasium just as he was about to relate the tale and Cassandra yelled for them. “Prescilla! Jarhead! Let’s get a move on!”
Really? She was going to rag on him for being late. “You sort of left me in a mushy pile on the stage, Cassandra. She healed me. It’s the only reason I made it here at all.”
“I didn’t ‘sort of’ leave you in a pile. I left you in a damn pile. Prescilla, head over and partner with Jillian. Congratulations on your Bestowal, but no healing anyone unless I say so, got it?”
“Yes, Cassandra, I understand,” Prescilla said sourly. “I want to hear the story later,” she whispered as she walked away.
Cassandra ordered Trace to help her distribute the same implements of injury with which she had abused him to the waiting Cherubs in the gymnasium. Most of them looked a little squeamish holding the hammers, propane torches, and knives.
“Look people,” Cassandra encouraged, “I know most of you wouldn’t hurt a fly. Just remember that you’re not really hurting anyone. Look at Jarhead here. He’s the picture of health after all I did to him. You need to be convincing. I want teams of three, a victim, an assailant, and an evaluator. Give it your all. Now let’s get going. You stay here, Jarhead. I’ll be back in a minute.”
It took ten.
Everyone wanted to be the evaluator first, and Cassandra had to assign roles for most of the groups. When she was satisfied that sledgehammers were smashing, torches were burning, and knives were stabbing, she returned to Trace.
“Let’s go. I’ve got to get you on the range so you can get used to shooting the Big Blessed Weapons.”
That was the best thing he’d heard yet. They left the gymnasium, Cassandra striding like she was trying to leave him firmly at her back. Trace jogged to catch up, wanting some confirmation.
“So you left the Ash Angel Organization?” he asked.
She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Your new girlfriend tell you that?”
“She’s not my girlfriend, but, yeah, she did.”
Cassandra turned and resumed her march forward, pace brisk. “I did. And no, I don’t want to talk about it, so shut it.”
“If you’re not in the AAO, what do you do?”
She smirked. “Whatever you want. Look, non-Blanks are best served by all this organization. It offers protection from the Dreads, and that’s increasingly important. But Blanks like you and me, if we’re good at all this act-normal stuff, we could take off and have as normal a life as people like us can. There are a handful of Blanks out there right now living the normal life. If you’re careful and disciplined in appearance and aging, you can live a handful of lives doing whatever you want.”
That sounded really tempting. “So when that mission went bad, that’s what you did? Went off the grid?”
She rounded on him so fast he didn’t have time to react. With an angry scowl, she shoved him into the wall, putting her finger on his chest and pinning him with fierce eyes.
“Look, Jarhead, there are two kinds of people I hate: gossipers who spread other people’s crap around and suck-ups who put birthday candles in it. You look like you might be both.”
He pushed her finger down like it was the barrel of a gun. “And I hate people who jump down my throat every time I open my mouth. So why don’t you just tell me what happened and get it over with.”
The finger came back up. “Look, I came back here because I thought I could help. So why don’t you leave the water-cooler gossip for the water cooler and try learning something.”
She lowered the finger and brushed off his shoulders like they were caked with two inches of dandruff, her blue eyes still fierce. “Now, we’re going to shoot some big guns. You bother me anymore, and I’ll use your head for target practice. Got it?”
He looked her right in the eye. “Yes, ma’am.”
She released him and stormed off down the hallway. So whatever mission had gone south was bad, really bad . . . and it was personal. Military service had acquainted him with missions gone wrong. Screwups—especially ones where good soldiers died—were bitter, but the victims usually consoled themselves by badmouthing their superiors. Perhaps Cassandra was the one who’d blown it. Maybe she left the Ash Angels to hide from recriminations. Whatever the truth, it had wounded her.
He had to jog to catch up. She led him through a pair of brown metal doors plastered with warning signs that opened into a shooting range with separate booths and targets. On the back wall hung a pistol like the one she had given him in the car outside the club, but there were a number of other weapons, including an odd syringe-like device. She took down one of the pistols and one of the rifles, loading them with the high caliber bullets.
She looked him square in the eye, voice mechanical and empty, as if she were reading from a script. “The Big Blessed Gun, or BBG, is standard equipment for every Ash Angel out in the field. We make our own weapons, so they aren’t traceable if one is lost. If you need a handgun and can’t get a BBG, use a .44 or a .45, something with stopping power.
“The problem is that organ damage doesn’t do anything to Ash Angels and Dreads, and our bodies are stronger and more resistant to damage. A .45 or .44 can break bone and do some nasty internal damage, but a collapsed lung or a pierced heart won’t stop revivified creatures. We don’t need blood flow. We don’t need air. A broken rib or two or a shredded muscle in the back might impair movement a little, but not enough to do much good. We don’t feel pain, so shock really isn’t a factor.
“As you know, in a firefight, most shots are going to hit the torso. The BBGs have big, really soft bullets meant to deliver a lot of kinetic energy on impact and not over-penetrate. Penetration isn’t as important as dealing a devastating blow to and around the first few inches of the impact site.
“So what you’ve got in your hand is a gun that’s short range, loud as thunder, and kicks like a snake-bit mule. Since you’ve shot weapons before, it’s really just a matter of getting used to how they feel. The BBG has five shots before a reload, the Big Blessed Rifle twelve, the shotgun six.
“Hitting the head is best for disablement as a BBG will collapse the head in one shot. Doing that in the heat of a firefight is hard, as you should know. It can take two or three hits to the chest and abdominal region to completely incapacitate a Dread. If you can, aim for the pelvis and legs. It’s the best way to immobilize a Dread besides the head, though you have to remember that they, like us, don’t feel pain and can still shoot back from prone. Got it?”
“Yeah. What about those horse syringes over there?”
“They’re called Stingers—a fairly recent development meant for Blank operatives, mostly.” She crossed the room and fetched one from the wall. “As with Ash Ange
ls, the heart is the key to killing a Dread and sending them on to hell. Specifically, their hearts must be completely burned. These are filled with nitroglycerine and a micro detonator. If you are a sneaky little Blank, and if you jam this into the proper spot of a Dread’s chest cavity, you can inject with the thumb plunger, and two seconds later they disintegrate into dust.”
“Dust? Not Ashes?”
“We return to ashes when drowned. They return to dust when burned. Angels to ashes and Dreads to dust. Our ritual for reawakening involves getting our Ashes to the ground of sacrifice. Theirs involves taking the hallowed dirt off the victim’s grave to where the unhallowed act took place. Make sense now?”
The thought sent a chill down his spine. He’d missed out on some crucial lessons, apparently. But the syringe did bring a question to mind.
“If their hearts have to be burned, and if they are like us, why don’t they have their hearts removed and leave them in safety-deposit boxes or something?”
“A smart question from the Jarhead!” she said in fake surprise. “There have been cases where they have tried that. It is solid strategy for the most part, but they heal at dusk, and removing a heart and finding a place to store it on a daily basis is a little inconvenient.
“Just remember that kind of strategy doesn’t work for us. You see, we become mortal as soon as our heart goes below the waterline, but we do not die unless we have or sustain an injury that is fatal. If we cut our heart out, going into the water would kill us immediately, so we prefer to hang on to ours. That said, being able to reappear at dawn wherever your heart is can have some strategic value if you’re careful . . . and don’t mind being naked.”
His mind started churning. “So if you had to get into a building with a guarded entrance, you could remove your heart, toss it over the fence, and wait till dawn?”
“Good, Jarhead. Of course, you always have to remember the equipment problem. Clothes and guns don’t go with you. Naked missions are not advisable, but it’s been done . . . more than once. It’s also kind of awkward if a person or a hungry dog gets a hold of your heart and runs off with it.”