by Hunter Blain
“Wh-what about, um, Depweg?” I asked, hesitantly. “And the twins?”
Gabriel let go of my hand, letting his arm drop to his side as he inhaled, and said, “Joey needs to forgive himself before he can heal. And Depweg…well, maybe it isn’t my place to speak about him.”
“Because of what he did in Mexico,” I stated flatly, already knowing the answer.
“Not only because of the innocents he slaughtered by letting the beast out, but also by passing the virus onto another and damning his soul. I shudder to think if Depweg will ever be able to forgive himself.”
“Depweg made another were?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest tightly, not liking this conversation. The light of Heaven was having less of an impact on me at the moment, like walking from the cold of winter into a heated home; at first it felt magnificent, but after a few minutes, you grew accustomed, if not uncomfortable. The thought of my best friend damning his soul had sobered me from the ecstasy of Heaven.
“Yes. That man also killed his wife and two children when he first transformed. One of which was an infant, John.”
“But all the good he’s done,” I mentioned almost pleadingly, dropping my hands and holding them out to my sides with my fingers outstretched.
“His soul is tainted, John. That’s all I can tell you.”
A pair of figures came out of the gates and walked toward us. I couldn’t see who they were due to the ambient light spilling from behind them, casting their features in obscuring shadows.
“I don’t accept that,” I said, closing my eyes and shaking my head with a bottom lip that quivered slightly. “He’s a good man.” Something bothered me, and I latched onto the thought as I sharply inhaled as I asked, “What about Dawson?”
Gabriel shook his head slowly as he looked down.
“He’s in Hell?! Are you kidding me? No. NO! That’s not fair!”
“He was given the same opportunities as every other mortal on Earth. Yes, he was on the path to redemption, but hadn’t quite reached the threshold before he perished.”
“Before he was murdered,” I corrected.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Gabriel informed me softly.
A plane released a bomb inside my head which headed for my core as I stared at Gabriel. Once the ordnance went off, I was going to unleash a verbal nuke on the man standing in front of me. I could almost hear the ominous whistle as it neared its target.
The figures grew closer in my peripheral vision.
“Hello, John,” a familiar voice sang out in Irish, catching me off guard. The bomb landed but nothing happened; a dud caused by the man who had just said my name.
My eyes grew wide and I turned to see the silhouettes of the man and woman approaching. My mouth dropped open, and any fight in me fled like trying to hold a fistful of water.
“Dad? M-mom?” I wheezed, a baseball catching in my throat and choking my words.
“Welcome ta Heaven, John. We knew ye’d make it,” Gerald Cook beamed, pride saturating his words. He opened his arms and I stiffly stumbled into his embrace; it was like my brain didn’t know how to send the appropriate signals anymore. I felt my mother wrapping her arms around us both. The love I felt in that moment radiated through my entire being, melting any rage I felt. The aroma of our farm filled my nostrils as I cradled my face in my father’s shoulder. Turning my head, I pulled my mother’s head in close and kissed her cheek, smelling a potato stew with rabbit meat in her hair. It had always been one of my favorite meals.
“I-I can’t believe it’s ye. Are ye alright?” I asked, specifically looking at my mother.
“Aye, o’course, John. We’re in Heaven, after all,” my mother assured me with a joyous smile.
“I miss ye both…so, so much.” I choked up, sniffling and wiping my face on the back of my forearm as I pulled back to regard my parents at arm’s length. I absently noted my accent had reverted to my mother tongue in my emotional state.
“We miss ye too, son,” my father said, “but we also know ye have a big responsibility atop your shoulders. An’ what big shoulders they are indeed,” he said, grabbing at the muscle beneath my coat and squeezing. It was indescribable to feel my father’s touch after more than five hundred years. Five. Hundred. Years.
“Oh an’ look how flat yer tummy is,” my mother said, poking my stomach like only a proud parent could.
“Aye. I, ah, had some time ta better me’self while in Faerie,” I said, embarrassed for some reason at having my fat-to-fit body transformation pointed out by my loving parents.
“See, Gerald? I told ye that girl would be good fer him.”
“I know, I know. She’s a looker, tha’ one. Just like yer ma when first I laid eyes on her.” Fiona Cook pinched my father playfully while giving a coy smile and blushing ever so slightly. “An’ she’s even more beautiful this day,” my father said, spreading a smile across his face that only true happiness could bring. The pure love my parents had for one another made me want to weep in unbridled joy.
Something tugged at my attention. I cleared my throat to subdue the near-choking emotion and asked in the accent I’d had since 1990, “Why am I here?”
“Ye died, John,” my father said.
“Aye, dear. ’Tis true,” my mother affirmed.
“Not…just yet,” Gabriel said with a knowing smile while elongating the first word. “It would seem a wild card is being played as we speak.” He was staring past me, and I turned to follow his gaze. Only the starlit universe stretched as far as the eye could see. Galaxies seemed to overlap in clouds of uncountable stars, all shimmering with colors that made me want to drop what I was doing and take up painting. “She is a tenacious one, isn’t she?” Gabriel finished.
At the mention of a “she,” I pried my gaze away from the unbearably beautiful universe and looked at the Archangel. “Who? What’s going on?” I asked, growing frustrated at how everyone was so calm. “Why isn’t your army out here ready to stop Hell?”
“Well, John, because you aren’t entirely dead. Your brain was protected by that thick skull of yours. Oh, and most of your torso is intact due to that truly marvelous piece of outerwear.” Gabriel looked down at the mental projection of the trench coat Da had made for me.
“My coat?” I asked as my hands reached up to rest on it, knowing as the words left my mouth that the custom trench coat was exactly what he had meant. I must have telegraphed my realization as Gabriel didn’t answer my question.
“Oh, dear, ye’ve gone an’ lost yer hat now, haven’t ye?” my mom asked with a concern that only a mother could produce.
My hands shot to my head, feeling the strands of my black hair as something wrapped around one of my legs and tugged, hard.
“What the!” I yelped in surprise, fighting the pull. “Mom! Dad! Th-there’s so much to tell you!”
“There’ll be time for tha’ later, son. Now, how ’bout ye go an’ save the world, hmm?” my father beamed, his pride in me filling my heart.
“We love ye, John,” my mother said as she ran up and placed a soft kiss on my forehead. She pulled back and we stood there, nose to nose, her beautiful eyes staring into mine. The memory of her dead white orbs from my torture washed away like dirt down a shower drain. I focused on the light-brown orbs, mentally snapping a picture. “Take this, fer luck,” she whispered, patting my chest where something soft protruded from my breast pocket.
Something enfolded my entire body and yanked me at blinding speeds through the after-verse.
12
I zoomed throughout the universe like a rebel fleet through hyperspace, but the sight of the passing galaxies didn’t interest me any longer. My mind was flooded with the joy of seeing my parents again. They were in Heaven waiting for me to join them. A warmth spread in my chest, and I understood it to be relief and love to a degree I hadn’t experienced in centuries. The feeling of being truly unconditionally loved was something I had nearly forgotten. Not to diminish my bond with the people closest to me
like Depweg and Father Thomes, but nothing could match the pure love of parents for their child, and a child for his parents.
They were in Heaven. Crap! They’re in Heaven. Now I one hundred percent couldn’t let the apocalypse happen. I mean, I wasn’t going to let the gates of Hell open, but I had only been, like, eighty percent all in. I mean, look at how I got here. I tried to save a few thousand Houstonians from a ball of hellfire and freaking died. I shuddered as comprehension dawned on me that if I hadn’t willed the last of my well of energy to envelop me, the flames might have incinerated my sexy brain, leaving nothing for me to come back to.
Wait, how was I coming back?
As if in answer, I slowed my descent just as I reached the field I had apparently landed in. There was an impact crater and a large crevasse where my corpse had struck the earth.
“Whoa,” I commented in awe of the ditch I had created that was the length of a football field.
“You must have hit hard, lover,” Lily purred as she dropped her ancient, powerful blood over every inch of my exposed bone. Even the tendons had disintegrated. “I had to find your jawbone and hands.”
“Dayum!” I emphasized dramatically. “Look at that bag of bones! Thank Lilith Depweg isn’t here or he might not be able to resist taking a femur or two!”
I reached out to place a hand on Lily’s shoulder appreciatively as she brought me back from the precipice of death, but my hand passed right through her solid flesh.
“Oh, right. I’m in the in-between, huh?”
“Yes,” Lily answered curtly. I noticed she looked out of breath as a lot of blood was being thrown onto my skeleton, which had begun sprouting organs, nerves, and vascular tissue.
“Wow. That coat is truly awesome,” I said, admiring the pristine trench that was merely covered in dirt. Heck, even the wooden buttons were in perfect shape.
“Mm-hmm,” Lily agreed, her eyes looking sunken now.
“Are, ah, you okay?” I asked, concerned.
“Fine, John. Just hurry up and get in your body, please.”
“Oh, right!” I concurred, letting my soul slide into its home…whiiiiiiich was a mistake. My nerves sang the song of their people, sending an overwhelming flood of signals to my brain in a not-so-subtle way to let me know my shit was, as assumed, fucked up.
My body writhed at the torso and arms that had been protected by my epic trench, but the rest of me didn’t have any muscle yet to move. I tried to scream, but only the sound of air bubbling out of a melted windpipe came in heaving blasts. To my repairing eardrums, I sounded like a B-movie zombie extra moaning over a high-pitched whine like microphone feedback.
I focused on my healing and tried to dive into my well of power and send out the good stuff, but I became dismayed when I saw that it was empty. I say “dismayed,” but “scared shitless” would probably be more accurate.
Holy shite, I said to myself, realizing it had taken my entire reserve of energy to just barely keep me alive. Had I already dipped into my precious reserves during my battle, I might not have made it, and might have unwittingly caused the beginning of the end.
A shudder ran up my spine, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the horror of understanding how close the universe had come to being wiped out or because muscle was growing out from my vertebrae and was being electrified by the chorus of screaming nerves.
All I could do was lie there, letting Lily do all the work while trying to ride out the unrelenting surges of agony. My breaths came in shallow gasps that sent renewed sheets of pain over my frame.
Muscle formed over my bones, connecting my body like a broken pot that was being painstakingly glued back together piece by piece. As the bulging, body builder–sized muscle (he lied to himself) grew over the exposed nerves, I felt a moment of reprieve before a fresh jolt of anguish as the nerves in my dermis sprouted. Moments later, the skin started to grow, covering the new nerves with a blanket of relief, leaving behind a sensation of pins and needles interlaced with uncomfortable warmth. It was as if the nerves were humming in warning about being exposed to the outside world again. I wanted to cry from the intensity of the pain but was determined to not let the lady, Lily, see me sob.
I took slow, deep breaths as my body finished repairing itself, attempting to control the really, really odd feeling of just regrowing my entire body.
My eyes fluttered open and I let my consciousness flow back into the windows of my control room, aaaaand realized something was fundamentally wrong when I attempted to say to my rescuer, “Dearest Lily, I could never fully express my undying gratitude for, once again, bringing my soul back from the after-verse. I will now be fully able to, hopefully, prevent the end of times from coming to fruition.”
But what came out was, “Dur ply, ver ded tato be tant fruit.”
“Um, what? I didn’t quite catch that,” Lily said, closing the wound on her wrist and holding it with her free hand as if it pained her.
I focused with all my might and slurred slowly, “Lil-y. Som-fing wo-wo-wong.”
“Oh dear. I think your brain might have been cooked inside your skull, John,” Lily guessed, shaking her head.
“O noes!” I slurred. I was able to understand her, and the signals I sent to my mouth seemed clear to me. But somewhere between here and there was a broken connection.
“Can’t you focus and heal your brain tissue?”
“Goo…I-I-I—”
“Good idea, yes, I get it. Focus, please,” she instructed, looking around as if all of a sudden uncomfortable. I had never seen her this way, and it was unnerving. Yet at the same time, it made her all the more beautiful to me.
I moved from behind my eyes into the control room of my mind and said to myself, The big black bear bit the big black bug and the big black bug bled blood. Oh, thank Lilith! I exclaimed once I realized my mental projection was unaffected. Hmm, does this mean this is my actual soul? I asked myself, turning my hands over as I inspected them. I thought about how many times I had slid out of my own body to invade a mortal’s mind. What if something had happened and I couldn’t get back? My soul-body shuddered in response. No time for that now, though.
I went to the well, noticed there was a fraction of energy covering the bottom, and willed it into my brain, focusing on repairing the tissue held within my skull.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the healing energy, keenly aware a fundamental recovery was underway.
After the last of the well was used, I performed the equivalent of a systems check and could feel that the job was done. Mostly. More or less.
Good enough, I said as I moved back into the control room and to my eyes.
I turned my head to Lily and said, “Testing, testing, one, three, B. Wait…crap! I don’t know math no more.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Lily asked, unamused. She was growing more agitated.
“I’ll be fine. But what about you?” I asked, carefully getting to my feet. My hands explored my body, making sure all the pieces were in place. My left hand rested on my chest, and I felt a lump under the coat.
“I’m fine. Can we go?” She brought her hands into her chest in a gesture I recognized as vulnerability.
“Do you need to eat or something?” I asked as a hand went under my lapel and into the breast pocket. My fingers grazed something soft and I gasped, knowing immediately what it was.
Lily took in a breath to answer and then saw my face. “What is it?”
I removed the gray beanie from my pocket and held it up for us both to see. I felt my lip quiver, and I shut my mouth tight as I looked up to the starlit sky and whispered, “Thank you, Mom.”
I pulled the fabric over my head, feeling the immeasurable quality that hugged my skull. A beanie made in Heaven itself.
Lily arched a perfectly groomed eyebrow before letting it return to a resting position. I thought the dirty blonde brow appeared darker until I noticed how pale her skin was.
“I’d like to get out of here before the wa
rlock finds us,” Lily suggested while looking around with flickering eyes.
“Let’s head home,” I said, looking around to find familiar landmarks. When I didn’t see any, I opened my left hand to activate my phone, and sighed at my oversight. The phone on my wrist had been reduced to atoms in the flames.
A dark feeling pulsed from my core and I almost doubled over before catching myself. Lily had already turned to presumably retrace the path she had taken. I needed to eat. Though I was confident I wouldn’t go into a blinding blood rage with PS under wraps, I could tell that Lily had only given me enough of her blood to bring me back. I licked my lips as I looked at the wrist that had spilled her blood.
“This way,” Lily said and began walking. We were under a symmetrical mix of roads that were hoisted a hundred feet in the air by concrete supports. Looking around, I became uncomfortable at where I thought I must have landed. The thirst took a slight pause at gnawing at my focus to briefly appreciate my growing concern.
“Ar-are we on the east side of Houston?” I asked, guessing that the roads were connecting highways.
“Yes.”
I let out a long whistle as I walked beside Lily, impressed at how far I had flown with the explosion. Something crept into my thoughts and I asked, “How bad was it?”
“What?”
“The explosion. It was close to Val’s and the church.”
“I don’t know. I was attending other matters when I heard the explosion and then saw a flaming John flying through the air like a meteor. Took me a while to find you.”
“Glad you did,” I admitted, but only half sincerely. I had been in Heaven with my parents, feeling peace bloom in my heart while with them. I shook my head once, hard, abolishing the self-centered thought. I had a job to do, and my death would not be good for my mother and father—oh, or the rest of, you know, humanity.
With a continuous three-count of breathing in and out, I fought to keep my raging hunger in line. Lily looked over at me once and decided whatever the reason for my breathing technique, it wasn’t worth her asking at the moment.