The Mona Lisa Sacrifice

by Peter Roman

  “How about we skip the witty banter and you tell me what you’re doing,” I suggested.

  “Certainly,” he said. “I’m killing you.” And then he shot me in the heart three times.

  I’ve been shot before. In fact, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been shot. Musket balls, shotgun pellets, AK-47 rounds—I’ve been intimate with all of them. And one thing remains the same: they all hurt like nothing you ever have known. Except for the ones that don’t hurt. They’re the ones that kill you. They don’t hurt because you’re already dead, and one of God’s few mercies is you don’t feel the things that really kill you.

  Edwards’s shots didn’t hurt at all. Nothing hurt as I fell back to the floor, hitting my head on the edge of the bookshelf. I tasted blood in my mouth but the blood didn’t hurt either. I had enough presence of mind to know I was in trouble, but I couldn’t even summon up grace to heal myself.

  Shit. Not again.

  I couldn’t even look away from Constable’s castle until Edwards stepped into my line of sight again and stood over me. He pointed the gun at my head and smiled some more.

  Goddamn, I hated angels.

  “I don’t understand why people pray to you,” he said. “You’re such a disappointment.” Then he pulled the trigger, and I saw the light at the end of the tunnel once more.

  MORGANA GIVES BIRTH

  TO AN IMPOSSIBLE CHILD

  I was back in the faerie pub. I had a drink in my hand but I didn’t remember ordering it. I didn’t remember how I’d got there. I didn’t even remember what year it was. My drink tasted like embalming fluid but I drank it down anyway and waved my hand at the bartender for another.

  But for once he didn’t serve me because he was busy looking at the stage. Everyone in the pub was looking at the stage. The musicians were gone, even though I could still hear them playing somewhere. A slow, deep number I didn’t recognize that sounded like a funeral dirge.

  Morgana was on the stage now, lying in the bed from her chambers. She was naked and I saw she was full term with the child. She writhed on the sheets and screamed, and that’s when I realized she was giving birth.

  And then everyone else around me screamed too, echoing her own cry. I looked around but no one moved to help her. So I pushed my way through the crowd and climbed up on the stage.

  Despite all the years I’d spent alive, I’d never helped anyone give birth before. But how hard could it be?

  “Cross,” Morgana hissed at the sight of me, and everyone in the pub hissed my name too. It was more than a little unnerving.

  I looked down at her and saw her belly moving. No, twisting and shaking. Like something inside was fighting to get out, not coming out naturally.

  “Forgive me for drawing you away from whatever it was you were doing,” said Morgana, smiling at me, “but I thought you might want to be present for the birth of your child.” The words sounded even creepier coming out of the mouths of all the fey.

  “Don’t you have a doctor in here?” I asked, looking around. “All these people and you never bothered to ensnare a doctor?”

  “We have no need of physicians,” Morgana said, and screamed again. Now I saw it was a scream of delight, not pain. She arched her back, and the baby inside her surged down, heading for the exit.

  “What do I do?” I asked. I went to take her hand to offer what support I could, but she pushed me away, laughing.

  “Hold your child,” she said, and the crowd repeated her command.

  And then the baby was there, slipping out of Morgana in a stream of blood and more black rings and scraps of parchment and pieces of quartz and snakes that slithered away.

  I reached for the baby, but stopped when I saw it. And then, before Morgana let me slip back into death, I screamed.

  IN A LITTLE WHILE

  WE SHALL ALL BE DEAD

  Dying doesn’t hurt, not really.

  Resurrecting, that’s what hurts.

  Imagine the pins and needles feeling you get in your arm when it falls asleep. Now imagine that feeling in each one of your limbs. Now imagine it in every cell of your body. Now imagine if that pins and needles feeling turned into fire. You’re not even close to what it feels like to be resurrected.

  I woke up screaming. I lashed out instinctively at the threat I remembered, at what had killed me, but Edwards wasn’t there. Neither was the room with the fireplace and bookshelves and paintings. Or Morgana and the faerie, for that matter. In fact, the house wasn’t there, and neither was the faerie pub. I was lying outside, on the ground.

  I tried to sit up but first I had to take care of the vomiting business that sometimes comes with resurrections. When that was finally done, I looked around.

  I definitely wasn’t in Seattle anymore. I was sitting on a patch of grass on a hillside, but it wasn’t the hill Edwards’s home was perched upon. This one overlooked the Thames River rather than Puget Sound. Only it was the Thames from my memory, not the present day. There were no buildings in sight on its banks, no passenger jets in the sky. Just green grass and trees and storm clouds overhead.

  I had a bad feeling about this.

  I did a quick inspection of myself. I was wearing the same clothes I had on when Edwards had killed me, although my shirt was bloody now and had three holes in the heart area. Nice grouping. I checked my pockets and found everything was still there—my wallet, the car keys to the rental, even the ring Morgana had given me. I pulled the shirt up and looked at my chest. There were still faint, puckered scars where the bullets had gone in. Which meant I hadn’t been dead that long. Maybe a week or so.

  I’d resurrected much quicker than usual. Sometimes it took decades. But then I didn’t usually have that much grace in my system.

  I thought about what I’d done to Aigra. He really had helped me, in his own way. The resurrection had used up most of the grace he’d given me, but I still had enough to defend myself a little. Maybe not against a crazy angel armed with a handgun, but perhaps against a sleepy security guard or something similar. Without Aigra’s sacrifice, I’d still be dead and powerless. It was almost enough to make me feel bad about what I’d done to him. Almost.

  But there was time to be sentimental later. Right now I needed to figure out where I was. I already had some suspicions on that front, which were confirmed when I turned around.

  The ruined castle from the Constable painting. Either Edwards had transported me back in time to the scene of the painting after killing me, or he’d somehow managed to move me into the painting itself. I didn’t know how he’d manage either one, so I put the odds at about even.

  “Well, this is a new one,” I said to no one in particular, because there was no one else there. Not even the shepherd boy and his dog from the painting. It was just the empty landscape and me. I probably would have found it profound, if I were the profound type. But I’m more the practical type, so I started searching for a way out of there.

  I went over to the ruins and looked around some more. There was an overgrown road that disappeared into some trees in the direction where the viewer of the painting would stand. In the distance beyond the forest, a thin column of smoke smudged the sky. So there was someone else alive around here, even if I couldn’t see any other buildings. I started down the road, hoping I was imagining all this. I didn’t really want to relive the past few centuries—especially the ones without indoor plumbing.

  I walked for a couple of minutes before I realized I wasn’t going anywhere. The forest and smoke in the sky stayed the same distance away. I looked down at the road. I was still at the beginning. I took a few more steps. I was definitely moving, but it was as if the land ahead moved with me. And the land behind me followed along. I wondered what the Renaissance painters would have to say about that and the rules of perspective.

  I tried going off the road, first to my left and then to my right, but the same thing happened. I could go a few feet away
from the ruins and then I couldn’t travel any farther. I reversed direction and went back down the hill. Everything went fine until I hit some bushes at the bottom of the slope. I reached out to part some branches and they moved away from me. I kept walking toward them and they kept receding. I stopped and pictured the painting again. The bushes were at the edge of the frame. I looked up at the clouds. They moved without moving, if that makes any sense. That is, they swirled and drifted, but they didn’t actually go anywhere.

  So. Trapped in the painting it was. I had to admit, it was a pretty good prison. At least, I hoped it was a prison and not just the place Edwards had chosen to dump my body and never visit again.

  I went back up to the ruins and sat on a fallen stone on the ground. I tried to figure out if there was some trick to my imprisonment I’d missed, some escape route that was right there in front of me. I tried to figure out why Edwards was pretending to be Judas, which puzzled me more than the things the angels usually did. I tried to figure out what all this had to do with Mona Lisa and Cassiel, because it sure as hell had something to do with them.

  I thought all these things over and came up with nothing. As usual. I looked up at the sky and sighed. I was getting tired of this sort of thing happening to me.

  I waited a few minutes, or maybe a few days, before something happened. It’s hard to say how long when the world doesn’t change around you. But eventually someone chuckled behind me while I was tossing rocks out over the bushes, in the direction of the river. Sure, it looked like I was killing time, but I was also searching for any flaw in my prison that I could exploit, any magical hole I could climb through to make my escape. Plus, I was killing time.

  I turned to see Edwards standing at the edge of the road, around the same spot I’d been forced to stop when everything moved away from me. He looked the same as when he’d killed me, only now he’d exchanged the gun for a friend—a large man in a black suit who shone with power. Gabriel. Edwards’s angel muscle, no doubt.

  “I was hoping I’d run into you again,” I said to Gabriel, “but I hadn’t quite imagined it being under these circumstances.”

  He didn’t say anything, just smiled. He was the strong, silent, smiling, strong kind, Gabriel was.

  I considered my options. I knew that in my weakened condition I couldn’t take them both in a fair fight. Then again, I’ve never really fought fair.

  “I expect you have some questions,” Edwards said to me.

  I nodded. “Why were you pretending to be Judas earlier?” I asked. “And why are you pretending to be that dead preacher now?”

  “We must all be Judas from time to time,” Edwards said. “Do not concern yourself with him.”

  “All right,” I said. “No problem.” Do not concern myself with Judas. Really?

  “As for the dead preacher,” Edwards went on, “I am not pretending to be him. I am him. Or rather, I was. Once upon a time I moved among the mortals as him and tried to bring them back to God. But people are no longer willing to listen to the divine word. So I let him die, or at least I let the humans think him dead. Obviously, I remain.”

  “But who were you originally?” I asked. “You know, your angel name.”

  “The name that God gave me no longer matters,” he said. “His age is over. Now it is our age. Which is why you’re here.”

  “When you say ‘here,’ where exactly is that?” I asked.

  But Edwards shook his head and smiled. “My turn,” he said. “What do you want with Mona Lisa?”

  “What makes you think I want anything with Mona Lisa?” I said, more to stall than to be witty and clever.

  “Sut said you mentioned her to get everyone’s attention,” Edwards said. “You would only do that if you knew of her. And you should not know of her.”

  “How is Sut anyway?” I asked. “No hard feelings, I hope.”

  “He is where you hid him,” Edwards said. “I left him there to teach him a lesson about failure.”

  I considered everything I knew, which wasn’t much.

  Edwards was clearly one of those religious angels. I mean the zealot type. Never a good thing in a being with power like that. He hung out with other powerful angels, like Gabriel. He seemed to be protecting Mona Lisa. He knew I was looking for her, but he didn’t know why. Which meant that his Judas masquerade had nothing to do with me. Oh yes, he also had a faerie sleeping in a bed in his home. Which wasn’t the home it looked like from the outside. And he somehow had the power to move in and out of paintings.

  I shook my head. This really wasn’t helping.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Edwards pointed out.

  “I’m not sure if we’re currently in America or England,” I said, “but either way I’m entitled to a lawyer.”

  Edwards shrugged. He turned and stepped onto the road, and Gabriel followed him. He turned into Judas again.

  And they vanished.

  No fading away, no puff of smoke, no taking flight on their majestic wings. One second they were there, the next they weren’t.

  I ran after them in case the portal or spell or whatever the hell they used remained open. I came close to the edge of the road, and the road moved away from me. The smoke reached for the sky in the distance. The clouds swirled overhead.

  I sighed and sat down on the fallen stone again. Sometimes, when there’s nothing to do but wait, the best thing to do is wait. So I waited. And waited. Night never came, the clouds never went anywhere, the smoke on the horizon never faded. And still I waited.

  To occupy the time, I picked up a rock and scratched passages from books and poems on the walls of the ruined castle. I wrote some lines from my favourite Keats poem on one wall.

  This living hand, now warm and capable

  Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

  And in the icy silence of the tomb,

  So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

  That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood.

  And, just to lighten the day, I inscribed a bit of Cummings on a tree beyond the ruins.

  somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

  any experience, your eyes have their silence

  Some time later, Edwards returned with Gabriel. He showed up looking like Judas again, and then dropped the disguise when he saw me. Gabriel wore his suit once more. It was tight enough to show off all his muscles. He always was like that.

  “How do you get in and out of here like that?” I asked them.

  Edwards smiled. He had a smile that looked like it had been made by a knife drawn across his face.

  “A trick Van Gogh taught me,” he said.

  I shook my head. “He never taught me anything but to keep an eye on my money while he was in the same room,” I said.

  Edwards shrugged. “It did require some persuasion,” he said. He tugged at his ear in case I didn’t get the hint.

  “Oh, so you’re that kind of angel,” I said.

  He dropped the smile, which didn’t take much. “Are you ready to talk now?” he asked.

  “I still don’t see my lawyer,” I said, because it’s important to keep your sense of humour in moments like this.

  Edwards nodded at Gabriel, who came at me without saying a word. He didn’t even take off his suit jacket. Not a good sign.

  Maybe I could have fought him. I certainly wanted to. But I didn’t bother. Why waste the grace? I had no weapons, and even if I managed to defend myself, or even beat him, I was still trapped in a painting with no way out. So I let him practise his right hooks and stomach shots for a while. When Edwards finally called him off, he wasn’t even breathing hard, although I was.

  “I’m sure I don’t have to point out that we’ll repeat this until you’re ready to talk,” Edwards said.

  I’d been in enough police stations and gulags to know how this was going to go. Eventually they’d wear m
e down, or I’d grow bored. But no one would come along to save me. No one ever came to save me. So there was no need to drag things out.

  I spat blood and nodded. “I think I’m ready now,” I said, and Gabriel dropped me and stepped away. I swear he looked disappointed.

  “On one condition,” I added, and Gabriel stepped forward again, but Edwards held up his hand and he stopped.

  “I’ll tell you what I want with Mona Lisa if you tell me what you want with her,” I said.

  Edwards thought that over for a moment. Gabriel remained ready to grab my throat and choke the life out of me. The clouds churned overhead without going anywhere.

  Then Edwards shrugged. “A fair exchange if it speeds things along,” he said.

  I got up off my knees and gave Gabriel my best “that’s all you got?” look. He gave me his best “you’re kind of soft for a punching bag” look. Fair exchange.

  “You first,” Edwards invited.

  I brushed the dirt from my clothes and told him the truth. I told him I was working for Cassiel, who wanted me to track down Mona Lisa for him. I figured I didn’t owe Cassiel anything at this point. I told him Cassiel would deliver me Judas if I found and freed Mona Lisa. I even told him about killing Remiel in the church; I didn’t want him to think I’d gone soft just because I let Gabriel beat on me.

  Edwards shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “That makes two of us,” I said. “Probably three,” I added, nodding at Gabriel.

  Edwards looked at his sidekick. “Cassiel had not yet taken sides the last I had heard of him,” he said. “What interest would he have in Mona Lisa?”

  Gabriel pondered the question in thoughtful silence. Or maybe just silence.

  “Aigra told me all about your little war,” I said. “I’m beginning to understand why God left all of you behind. You must have driven him crazy.”

  Edwards walked past me and gazed out at the Thames, which was busily flowing nowhere.

  “Aigra?” he said. “He disappeared so long ago I assumed him dead.”