I looked around at the dissolving demon, the police cars surrounding the block, the unconscious necromancer, and my slime-coated right arm, and sighed. “I think this was my last clean shirt.”
“Don’t you have an angel to find or something?” Arianne asked.
Oh shit, Gabriel! I turned and started sprinting up the street, hoping to get back to the hotel before he decided to smite someone. Or worse, before he put the book down and Gabe came back out to play.
Epilogue
Gabriel was sitting on the bed when I got back to the hotel. The book of Gabe, as I was calling it in my head, leaned against his side, but he was completely absorbed with his task. For my part, I was completely baffled by the scene in front of me. Instead of meditating, or doing kata, or basically doing anything I would expect from a divine being, he had my iPad in his hands and was tapping on the screen at lightning speed.
“You know how to use an iPad?” I asked.
“I do now. Your friend Dennis was very helpful. This internet you mortals have created, it is…quite remarkable. There are things on there that I never even dreamed possible. And the games! Astounding! This one, with the zombies eating the plants…the lawnmowers…the little catapult zombies! I love this game!” He grinned at me like an idiotic eight-year-old proud of finally learning to tie his own shoes.
“As your buddy Gabe would say, there are stranger things on heaven and earth. You ready to go?”
“Go where?”
“Charlotte. I need to introduce you to Michael, again, and maybe you can help him find himself, so to speak.”
“No.” His attention was fixed firmly on the screen, and he tapped furiously. If Dennis wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him for teaching this angelic savant how to play Plants vs. Zombies.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean I’m not going. I don’t wish to accompany you, I do not wish to participate in your quest for Father, and I certainly don’t wish to see Michael again, amnesia or no. My brother is, as you mortals put it, a dick.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter. I need you to go to North Carolina with me, get Michael back in his right mind, and then help restore Glory’s wings.”
“No. Now be silent, human. I am trying to beat this final level, and I am down to only two lawnmowers.” I assumed that was bad. I never got into video games, except for Neverwinter Nights. Most of the fighting games feel too much like your average Tuesday for me, and first-person shooters are way too close to home. Gabriel bent over, pouring all his attention onto the screen, and tapping with lightning speed. I hoped briefly that he wouldn’t break the screen, then he sat upright and pumped his fists.
“Yes! Got you, zom-boss! Is this where we high-five?” He turned to me, one hand held up. I slapped palms with him, then leaned in for a bro-hug. But instead of pounding his back as prescribed in the Official Manual of Bro-Hugs, I reached down and picked up the tome leaning against his hip.
As soon as the book broke contact with Gabriel, there was a huge flash of light and a small pop. I almost fell over as the big-ass buff angel turned into the skinny little bookseller with tufts of brown hair sticking out from under a porkpie hat and a Mr. Magoo look on his face. The robe he had worn as Gabriel transformed this time into an ill-fitting brown suit with a white dress shirt, round glasses, and a brown vest with a pocket watch chain stretched across his little pot belly. He looked like a cross between the dotty uncle in a British period flick and an absent-minded college literature professor.
“Who goes there?” he asked, looking around with obviously no clue where in the world he was.
“Hi, Gabe,” I said. “It’s almost time to go on our trip. Are you ready to go see your old friend Michael?”
His face lit up in a huge oblivious grin, and he raised his right hand, finger to the sky. “Lay on, Macduff! And damned be he that first cries ‘Hold, enough!’”
Acknowledgments
Thanks as always to Melissa Gilbert for all her help, and for trying in vain to teach me where the commas go.
Many thanks to the amazing Natania Barron for this cover. You should go buy her new book, Wothwood. It’s badass.
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About the Author
John G. Hartness is a teller of tales, a righter of wrong, defender of ladies’ virtues, and some people call him Maurice, for he speaks of the pompatus of love. He is also the best-selling author of EPIC-Award-winning series The Black Knight Chronicles from Bell Bridge Books, a comedic urban fantasy series that answers the eternal question “Why aren’t there more fat vampires?” In July of 2016. John was honored with the Manly Wade Wellman Award by the NC Speculative Fiction Foundation for Best Novel by a North Carolina writer in 2015 for the first Quincy Harker novella, Raising Hell.
In 2016, John teamed up with a pair of other publishing industry ne’er-do-wells and founded Falstaff Books, a publishing company dedicated to pushing the boundaries of literature and entertainment.
In his copious free time John enjoys long walks on the beach, rescuing kittens from trees and getting caught in the rain. An avid Magic: the Gathering player, John is strong in his nerd-fu and has sometimes been referred to as “the Kevin Smith of Charlotte, NC.” And not just for his girth.
Find out more about John online
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Also by John G. Hartness
The Black Knight Chronicles - Omnibus Edition
Paint it Black
In the Still of the Knight
Man in Black
Scattered, Smothered, & Chunked - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season One
Grits, Guns, & Glory - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season Two
Wine, Women, & Song - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 3
Year One: A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Collection
The Cambion Cycle - Quincy Harker, Year Two
Queen of Kats Book I - Betrayal
Queen of Kats Book II - Survival
From the Stone
The Chosen
Copyright © 2017 by John G. Hartness
Cover Design by Natania Barron
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Or parody. It might be parody, too.
Demons suck. Don’t play with demons.
Do hang out with crazy old dudes in bookstores who only speak in Shakespeare quotes.
Don’t do drugs.
Except for the good ones. Do all of those.
Why are you reading the copyright page? Don’t you have anything better to do?
For God’s sake, go buy another book. You’re obviously bored. www.falstaffbooks.com.
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