Bad Cow (Oræl Rides to War Book 1)

by Andrew Hindle

  With arms that stretched down to the knees of its bandy little legs – both arms and legs were clearly discernible despite the robe, in the angles of the limbs as they filled the material – it looked like nothing quite so much as a large, slightly-more-upright chimpanzee. It was straight out of Planet of the Apes. Its hands and feet were bare, long-digited, black and tufted with the same coarse black hair as the rest of its body.

  It ought to have looked absolutely grotesque. And yet, even before you saw the great sweeping pair of grey-black wings arching away from its sloped back and rising into the darkness of the nave as though the church itself were manifesting the figure somehow, it wasn’t grotesque.

  It was dazzling.

  The winged ape-thing had the same glorious aura of unearthly beauty and supernatural glamour as Barry, albeit in a form considerably farther removed from the classic humanoid. It was clearly an Angel, and Seam felt a surreal pang of shame that he had for some reason assumed only humans could become Angels. From the evidence–

  The bright-amber, deep-set eyes of the new Angel fixed on Seam as he peered past Barry’s wing. It sighed heavily. “You had to bring a pet.”

  Barry glanced back over his wing at Seam, and grinned. “He can also drive,” he replied lightly, and then turned back to the robed figure. “Who are you?”

  “What?” the stranger said in clear annoyance. “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Did the Wicked Witch of the West send you…?” Barry hazarded.

  “So let me get this straight,” the ape-Angel said impatiently, ignoring Barry’s remark. Its voice was raw and slurred, somehow mushy, and Seam knew it was because it was forcing sounds and shapes from its throat and palate and mouth that did not naturally occur there. Despite this, its voice had the same indefinably majestic tone to it as Barry’s now had, as though it possessed an unheard backing choir providing harmonies that went directly into the brain without the involvement of the ears. “The name Moskin Stormburg means nothing to you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And you have no idea who I am?” the creature went on.

  “I’m assuming you’re not Moskin Stormburg.”

  “Not–” the ape-Angel spluttered. “No I’m not Moskin fucking Stormburg. Do I look like an Elf to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Barry said with impossible composure. “I’ve never seen an Elf before.”

  “Wait up,” Seam said, his voice sounding very high and weedy in comparison to the two Angelic voices that, distinct though they were from one another, both transcended the art of speech and made him feel like something that had just crawled out from under one of the pews. “Wait up, wait, did you say ‘Elf’ now?”

  The ape-Angel sighed again. It sounded like it had a lot of practice at sighing. “Could you ask your mortal friend to go and get some air outside or something? He’ll be better off.”

  “My mortal friend’s name is Dale Waddington,” Barry said coolly. “Mine’s Barry Dell.”

  “I know what your damn name is, son.”

  “We still don’t know yours,” Barry insisted stubbornly.

  “Did you say ‘Elf’,” Seam whispered.

  That was when he blacked out.

  STORMBURG’S THEOREM

  Barry had time to spin and catch Seam in his arms before he crashed to the hard slate floor. The wings added considerable inertia, but he was surprised at the reaction speed he seemed to command. The Seamster had barely begun to bend at the knees and the small of the back by the time Barry had caught him and lowered him the rest of the way.

  He straightened and gave the hairy Angel an accusing look. “What was that?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” the stranger said gruffly, “he was bound to faint sooner or later, even without a gentle nudge that I may or may not have given him.”

  “You–”

  “Relax. He’ll be fine. More than a couple of hours in close proximity to an Angel gives humans something like a blood-sugar crash, and the reaction’s even more intense when there’s more than one of us. And even more when one of us is an Archangel. Plus, I’m guessing this guy’s been with you since you landed, so his brain will have been taking in a whole lot of new information it wasn’t necessarily equipped to deal with.”

  “Wait up,” Barry said, aware that he was echoing the expression of his ‘mortal friend’ from moments before, “Archangel?”

  “Yes,” the stranger growled, and spread its arms far wider than regular human anatomy would allow, “that’s me. Gabriel. I am the Archangel Gabriel. Okay?”

  Barry had time to open his mouth and say, “I–” before Gabriel interrupted him.

  “But of course you’d already know that, if Stormburg’s Theorem was even remotely sound.”

  “You mean Stormburg the Elf?” Barry said helpfully. The Apparently-Archangel-Gabriel glared at him. “What did you do to the vicar?” Barry went on. “His car’s parked outside. Did you blood-sugar him too?”

  “He’s fine too,” Gabriel replied. “He lives in a flat across the street, he’s over there asleep right now. He … knows I’m here, and he’s been expecting you. I laid the groundwork. You’re welcome.”

  “It seems like there’s a lot going on here that I should probably know about,” Barry remarked.

  “You’re not kidding,” Gabriel sighed, and stumped across to the nearest row of pews, robes and wings sweeping. He sat down – in fact the motion was more like hopping up onto the seat, since his legs were so short, but he managed it far more elegantly than any descent into a backed chair Barry had performed since returning to the mortal plane. Gabriel, evidently, had had far more time to get used to operating with wings. “‘A lot’ doesn’t even come close to it.”

  “Are you going to share any of it with me,” Barry asked, folding his arms, “or is this one of those frustrating cases where you just can’t tell me any–”

  Nutter’s dog’s blanket chose this moment to unwind itself from his hips and flop around his ankles. Gabriel grunted in annoyance.

  “And where’s your robe?” the Archangel demanded. “You should at least have a robe. Evidently this whole thing has been a complete clusterfuck from beginning to end.”

  “Maybe you should begin at the beginning,” Barry said, retrieving both his blanket and his dignity and attempting to drape both back around himself, “since I am evidently in the middle of this particular cluster?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “Starting at the beginning is … not practical,” he said. “Let’s start at the end instead – less distance to cover,” he gestured at the pew beside him. “Take a seat, Barry.”

  Barry squinted at the bizarre ape-Archangel as he crossed the floor to join him in the pews. “So you know my name.”

  “You told me your name about thirty seconds ago.”

  “So I did,” Barry conceded, then bounced back. “And you responded with ‘I know what your damn name is, son’.”

  Gabriel’s huge, leathery mouth quirked as he smothered a grin in irritation. “I did know your name already, yes,” he admitted. “I’ve been watching you. All of you. The six who died in the elevator crash.”

  “Seven,” Barry said. “There was–”

  “Yes, the janitor,” Gabriel scowled. “Him as well. That was more of a random element, but–”

  “So the six of us dying in the elevator, that wasn’t random?” Barry jumped in. “Did you cut the threads of our lives, like one of the Fates?”

  “Not exactly,” Gabriel said dryly, and gave him a more appraising look. “I forgot you were at least semi-educated,” he said in a grudging voice.

  “Don’t let the blanket fool you.”

  “I won’t,” Gabriel said, solemn. “But you’re getting ahead of it all again,” he lowered his shaggy, heavy-skulled head, and sighed again, seeming to collect himself. Then he turned and gave Barry a nod. “First things first. Welcome back, welcome to the side of the Angels, nice to have you on board.”

  “Thank you,” Barry
said, surprised at how surprised he was to hear these words. “It’s nice to be back. Actually … it’s really nice.”

  Gabriel grinned, showing off a grid of massive yellow teeth that were mostly square, but had enough incisors in there to show that whatever he’d been before becoming an Archangel, ‘herbivore’ definitely hadn’t been part of the description. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” he said. “It’s been a long time for me, but all the aches, all the weakness, all the limitations and neuroses dropping away … feels pretty wild. I recommend you enjoy it … just try not to freak out the natives.

  “Alright, that’s the welcome wagon out of the way…”

  “That was the welcome wagon?” Barry blinked.

  “I’ll let the other five give you the full Illuminati woo-woo initiation experience,” Gabriel said sourly. “In the meantime, down to brass tacks.”

  Barry winced. “You oughtn’t say that to a Cullem’s Nails boy,” he said, then waved a hand when Gabriel looked at him levelly. “Sorry. Carry on.”

  “Alright,” Gabriel grunted. “The first thing you need to understand is that yes, we do help people where we can. We don’t fly around blowing trumpets and waving flaming swords anymore – most of the people who reckon they’ve been touched by an Angel have actually been touched by a blood clot – but we do help.

  “It didn’t use to be that way. There was a long period, at the start, where we kept completely out of the way. But then we came to realise that this planet wasn’t going to make it unless we did something. Humanity was going to wipe itself out. So now we do what we can to keep things running.

  “Now don’t get the wrong idea. We’re not superheroes, flying around and saving people from conveniently-unsympathetic muggers and stuff. Most of what we fight against is way more obscure than that. People don’t even realise most of it exists. But by and large, the population and life-expectancy keeps growing and crime and death-rates keep dropping, and some of that – not a lot of it, but some, at least – is down to us.

  “You’re going to find you have certain … advantages … over humans – over most things on the Earth, for that matter. You’re faster, stronger, you’ve got the wings, and a mess of other little tricks and abilities that we’ll get into later. Mostly, though, you’ve got your Angelic glamour. Ooh la la,” he grinned again, intentionally grotesque. “It makes you exceptional, yet at the same time will allow you to pass in and out of people’s notice, like a beautiful sunrise that’s forgotten by the time morning rush hour sets in. That’s partly you, partly just humans’ ability to ignore things. It’s what makes most of our work possible, and why you only rarely see crazy headlines about flights of Angels – and when you do see crazy headlines, it’s hardly ever about us.”

  “‘Hardly ever’?” Barry murmured.

  “There were two incidents,” Gabriel said, “since the reinvention of the printing press. None since the colour television. Our work often makes the front pages, but we’re not connected to it.”

  “Right,” Barry nodded. Something about Gabriel’s phrasing – that reinvention, mostly – tugged at his attention, but he let it pass in favour of the big picture. Gabriel had been around for a long time, by the looks of it. Probably enough time for something like a printing press to be invented, then forgotten in some collapsed empire, then invented again. He’d read about–

  “Right,” the Archangel squinted at Barry, scanning for smarm or sass-mouth or whatever else, then continued once he was satisfied. “You’ll already be adapting to some of these skills of yours, even if you’re not conscious of it. You knew to come to a church, for example.”

  “Yeah,” Barry frowned. “What’s that about?”

  “In the crudest possible terms,” Gabriel said, “holy ground is … sanctuary.”

  Barry grinned. “Like Highlander?”

  “No, not like – like ‘if you’re on unconsecrated ground when the sun comes up, you’ll collapse and spend the rest of eternity as a wingèd vegetable’,” Gabriel growled. “We’re basically undead, Barry, and what sustains our physical presence and gives us power in this sphere is … well, let’s call it the grace of a higher power, even though it’s more complicated than that. Holy ground is where it shines through – or where it lingers like the last little puddle of mud in a dried-out waterhole.

  “And because we are undead, daylight fucks us right the Hell up. So we have to hunker down in our little divine bolt-holes and wait for the sun to set.”

  “So we’re like Vampires,” Barry said.

  “I’m getting to the Vampires,” Gabriel snapped. “First we’re doing Angels.”

  “Oh.”

  “We can talk about the actual mechanics and the metaphysics of it later, if we absolutely must,” Gabriel went on. “One of the others might be able to explain it better anyway. I always get lost on the whole but-the-world-is-a-ball, the-sun-is-just-over-there, what-if-we-were-in-space, aren’t-stars-just-suns thing … for now, though, here are the important facts. You were human,” he ticked off the facts on his huge, gnarled fingers. “You died. You were glorified. You returned to this world as an Angel. You’re likely to be responsible for this city, probably all of Australia,” he ran out of fingers on one hand, and lowered both into the folds of robe in his lap. “Good luck with that.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  “It’s a big place, and crossing time-zones takes some planning. Because…” Gabriel waited.

  “Because I have to be on holy ground by sunrise,” Barry recited.

  “Correct,” Gabriel nodded, as if Barry had just passed some gruelling and extended apprenticeship rather than taking in one patently oversimplified fact. “Alright,” he went on, “let’s talk about what’s happened to you in the past hour or so.”

  “I don’t remember any of it,” Barry said. “Not the last half hour of my life, nothing for the first few minutes after I came back, nothing in between.”

  Gabriel waved a hand. “That’s normal. It may come back, it may not. What I can try to explain, though, is a bit about your return. And why I was expecting you to actually remember something from in between anyway. This is where Stormburg’s Theorem comes in.”

  “Stormburg the Elf,” Barry said, with a paradoxical feeling that they were moving onto slightly more familiar ground despite the fact that said ground had an Elf on it.

  “Look, stop harping on about that,” Gabriel said. “I promise you, you have the wrong idea about Elves. First of all, basically nothing in Earthly mythology overlaps with them. Second of all, there are none on Earth now. I don’t think there ever were. They weren’t allowed, not really. Not for a long time. Earth has always been … well. There were humans, a couple of other races – but Elves, no.

  “Another thing you have to keep in mind here is, when I say ‘Stormburg’s Theorem’, I never met the guy. All I’ve got is a name, an identity – including species – and this kooky plan of his. There’s no actual means of communication, so he can’t send me a detailed proof, we can’t swap insurance information, and we can’t coordinate on experiments. Hell, the only reason I call it a theorem instead of a theory or a pie in the sky is that a couple of the other Angels insist all the numbers add up…”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “Okay,” Gabriel sighed again, gravelly and infinitely weary. “It’s like this. You, and your fellow elevator passengers, and the janitor down below, died in a very special place.”

  “The Duxworth Hotel?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel scowled. “No. Alright, if you insist, yes. You died in a special place, at a special set of coordinates in space and under a special set of conditions on both sides.”

  “Both sides of what?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “The veil, if you like. That’s what I’ve heard the others calling it,” he squinted at Barry again. “You’re wondering why one of them isn’t here to explain all of this to you.”

  “No,” Barry lied. “I was just wondering about this veil. You mean the veil, the class
ic – the veil between the living and the dead? That type of thing?”

  “The veil between this world and everything,” Gabriel replied. “It … see, even as messed up as your glorification was, some of this should be ringing a bell.”

  Barry frowned. “Yes,” he said, “and no … I told the guys that whatever happened to me, it might have been down to a higher power, or some scientifically quantifiable force, but it really amounted to a rubber stamp.”

  “Exactly,” Gabriel said animatedly, leaning over in the pew and jabbing a finger into Barry’s blanket-clad thigh. “Exactly, a rubber stamp. Whatever authority, whatever consciousness used to oversee the orderly running of the universe as we know it, whatever used to be responsible for the glorification of Angels and directing our efforts in keeping the world peaceful – that authority isn’t here right now. So everything’s just carrying on according to the standard laws of nature, which – well, I think I can safely summarise them with the words ‘life’s a bitch and shit happens’.”

  “Which is how I managed to become an Angel,” Barry said ruefully.

  “Hey,” Gabriel said seriously, “listen, you were a kid when you died – and not a bad kid. You’d been up against some crap and you’d stood strong. You did the right thing. You were no more or less deserving of glorification than ‘most any other human out there. Don’t believe for a second that only monks and zealots and philanthropists become Angels. You have so much time to show us what sort of Angel you can be. The time you spent being a human is basically nothing. Even if you’d lived to the ripe old age of a hundred and ten – nothing.”

  “But it was still essentially random,” Barry said. “It could have happened to any one of the people who died in the Duxworth,” this time it was his turn to squint at the Archangel. “And you were expecting it to happen to one of the others,” he concluded. “Weren’t you? You were expecting me to remember something, and you were obviously expecting someone who could speak Zib.”

  “Xidh,” Gabriel replied vaguely, then fell into a considering silence for a while. “You’re right,” he went on eventually. “It could have happened to any of the people who died in the Duxworth,” he said, “or to any of the hundreds of thousands of people who die every day, all over the planet. This isn’t a regular occurrence, Barry – you’re only the sixth Angel to arrive in the past two thousand years. Not including myself, of course.”