by R. E. Vance
I sighed as if bored. Only two things got through to a kid like him: fear and respect. And since respect took time, I went for fear. “Fine … but will you do me a favor?” I said in a steady, even tone. EightBall looked at me curiously. “When you come, just make sure you take me down first. I don’t want any of your blood on my hands, and if I see you hurting someone living under my roof, well then …” My voice trailed off, letting his imagination finish the thought.
EightBall looked at me, confused, a hint of fear touching his eyes. For a moment I thought maybe that was enough, that him seeing how deadly serious I was, how unafraid I was, would deter him from attacking. Like I said, I knew his type. EightBall’s eyes hardened. “OK, old man,” he said, nodding slowly, “I can do that for you. You go down first.” He backed away from the bars, rejoining his gang on the bench.
Hellelujah—so much for a peaceful resolution.
Chapter 4
Trains, Planes, Automobiles and Wings
Getting Penemue into the backseat of my old Plymouth was damn near impossible. In the end I had to rest him on his stomach. It wasn’t far to the hotel and we could have walked it, but have you ever tried to act as a crutch for an eight-foot-tall, four-hundred-pound angel? The last time I tried, I nearly passed out from the effort, even though Penemue used his wings as crutches.
The arches of his wings jutted out the driver’s side backseat window, while his taloned feet hung out the passenger’s. It wasn’t the best I could do, just the best I was willing to do. The angel had, after all, woken me from a very pleasant dream.
“Drambuie,” he said as I pulled out of the police station parking lot.
Drambuie was a sickly sweet honey whiskey and it was the only thing the fallen angel drank, claiming it was the closest thing mortals had to Ambrosia. If you’ve ever had a Drambuie hangover, you’ll know that the last thing you’d ever want to drink was Ambrosia. I honked at no one in particular as I hit a speed bump way too fast. The angel groaned, and I smiled at my over-developed sense of passive aggression. Like I said—pleasant dream.
“I think you’ve had quite enough of that stuff for one night,” I said, taking a fast turn. Another groan from him. Another smile from me.
Penemue lifted one of his wings, pulled at a little canteen of Drambuie and began downing it. Seeing that turned my passive aggression to aggressive aggression. I reached in the back, yanked the canteen from his grimy claws and threw it out the window. “Hey,” he protested. “I was drinking that.”
“Yes, you were,” I growled. “And what good did that do you? I’m bailing your ass out of jail at four in the morning, we got a gang of testosterone-jacked teenagers who want to turn you into a pincushion of light—and you want to drink some more. What’s wrong with you?”
“The same thing that is wrong with all of us. Mortal Madness! For which death is the only known cure.”
“Shut it,” I said.
“Indeed,” he said. A hand popped out from the back with another canteen in it. “Drink?”
“Drink? What? Where did you get that from?” I said, grabbing the second canteen and throwing it out the window.
“I have more than one wing, Human Jean-Luc,” Penemue said matter-of-factly. “And layer after layer of feathers. I could stay dry in a tsunami. Did it once in a river of blood …”
“Penemue!” I barked. “Are you even listening to me?”
From my rear view mirror I could see the angel’s face turn toward me. Our eyes met in the glass. “Jean, please. I hear you. All of Paradise Lot hears you.”
“Why!”
“I wanted to play pool,” Penemue said. “Figured I’d be good at the angles.”
That was too much. I pulled the car to the side and threw the gear into Park. I turned to face the fallen angel and said, “I supported you when you were homeless. I covered for you when the cops came ’round looking for all the library books you stole. I lied for you when your makeshift distillery blew up and I took care of you when you sprained your wing playing Santa Claus and got stuck in a chimney.”
“St. Nick, and it was an industrial shoot and I was trying to escape a pack of guard dogs with a taste for the divine.”
“Whatever!” I shouted. “The point is, you were laid up for three months while I fed, watered and Drambuie. I think I’ve earned enough credit to know why! Why would you mess with them? Why would you go to the HuMans’ headquarters? Why? Why? Why!”
“Because …” Penemue hesitated. “Because I wanted to apologize.”
“To who?” I asked.
“To Newton. EightBall, I mean.”
I had expected a lot of clever answers from the angel, but the thought that he’d apologize to anyone for anything left me flabbergasted. Eventually I asked, “For what?”
“For what?” Penemue echoed. “Let’s see … Perhaps I wanted to apologize for burning down his house. Or perhaps it was because I felt guilty for stealing his future and turning him into an orphan. Or perhaps I wanted to say sorry for killing his parents.”
That last comment shut me up. The two of us drove in silence until the angel eventually broke it. “Killing his parents, Jean-Luc. Even for a human, you are daft. During the GrandExodus, I fell on his home and killed his parents. For that, I felt I at least owed him an apology, even if it is thirteen years too late.”
So that was what this was all about. Others were just as shocked by the gods leaving, so much so that most didn’t show up in the best of moods. In Australia, scores of bunyips came out of the sea. In Japan, yūrei descended Mt. Fuji. Giants wandered out of Stonehenge, and in Oxford angry dwarves walked out of some poor guy’s chimney. And those were the nicer arrivals. Sadly, in most places Others showed up in a more Biblical fashion.
Volcanoes spewed dragons and tornadoes were filled with shrieking banshees. Oceans boiled and skies turned blood red. In Paris, the earth opened up, swallowing the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile as ghouls and orcs streamed out in droves, attacking everything and anything that was unlucky enough to have been nearby. In Greece, minotaurs leveled the Parthenon. In China, the Jade Emperor’s army wiped out entire villages before their rage finally subsided.
And as for Paradise Lot? Well, the sky opened up and legions of angels fell onto my city like comets. One of those comets killed PopPop, making me an orphan. Another comet did the same to EightBall.
More fluorescent tears streamed down Penemue’s face as he spoke. “When I was ejected from Heaven, I fell—and not for the first time, mind you—onto this cursed city … and right onto the apartment building where young Human Newton’s parents resided. I didn’t mean to, but as anyone who has fallen can tell you, one does not always have control over one’s trajectory.” He spoke the last sentence with a pompous air, trying to hide his shame.
“For days, I stood out on the Palisade,” Penemue continued, “trying to work up the courage to speak to the young boy. When I saw him this evening, laughing with his friends, I thought to myself that today would be the day I apologized—but before I could say anything, the gang of boys just attacked, and … well, you know the rest.”
I didn’t know what to say. Penemue’s guilt for accidentally killing EightBall’s parents was consuming him. This was not the kind of guilt that went away with a confession or even self-destruction. Believe me, I know. This kind of guilt stalked you, nipping away at your heels little by little until you were driven mad. And there was nothing I could say or do to console my friend.
Penemue looked up and said, “Did you know that young Human Newton was considered a child prodigy? At the age of eight he could play the entire Fifth Symphony with nary an error. His parents were so proud that they saved every penny they could to encourage his talent. Who knows what he could have accomplished had I not stolen his future from him?”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “It’s theirs.” I jerked my head at the car roof, indicating the gods. “For leaving. For the way they left.”
“Perhaps …” he said, his
voice drifting off. “But I do have wings, and had I been just a little bit faster or more aware, I might have fallen elsewhere.” And with that fell more fluorescent tears, until the twice-fallen angel fell once more into sleep.
Chapter 5
Lust or Love
We drove home, a soft snore emanating from the backseat. After hearing Penemue’s confession, I knew that the EightBall problem wasn’t going away. Beyond the little annoyance that the HuMans were a violent group of Otherphobes who would start targeting the One Spire Hotel, this was an issue of penance for the twice-fallen angel. How could he blame himself for their death? It wasn’t his fault that he was evicted from Hell without warning. And it wasn’t his fault that his entry to the mortal realm happened to be over Paradise Lot. But those were rational arguments for a much larger problem, and as one who has more blood on his hands than a thousand good deeds could wash off, when it came to seeking redemption, rationality was not the nail on which you hung your coat.
Redemption is reliant on being forgiven, and I seriously doubted that EightBall would ever forgive Penemue. Even if he did, Penemue would never forgive himself. Although I felt for my friend’s plight, I had a more practical issue to deal with—EightBall would come for him, and soon. Penemue was a fallen angel with a massive amount of power, both physical and magical; I knew that he would suffer a thousand strikes and still not be tempted to lift a finger against a human. So was his way. So was the way of so many Others hated by my fear-mongering species. He might even welcome the attack, seeing it as a blood-for-blood kind of deal—like I said, redemption wasn’t rational. But Penemue was only one of the Others who lived at One Spire Hotel, and what he did put them in danger as well. His confession, although noble, was also selfish.
I nervously thumbed the industrial heavy-plastic twist-tie I’d coiled around a plain silver chain I always wore. Other than being designed to hold together electric wires in all temperatures, there was nothing special about it except that once-upon-a-time I used it as an engagement ring when I proposed to Bella. At seventeen, I was in a hurry and didn’t have any money to buy a real ring. That night I knew it was now or never, so I raided the house until I found the twisty tie. Then I got down on one knee on a beach near Paradise Lot and proposed. Lucky for me, Bella thought the twisty-tie was the most romantic thing ever. I don’t know why and don’t care. All I know is I was damn lucky to have found Bella. I had to hand it to the twisty-tie makers, they knew how to build something to last. I touched the last tangible symbol I had for Bella as I thought about Penemue’s current dilemma. I had always found cruising a great way to clear my head. But even after taking the really long way home, I had nothing. After circling the block three times, I parked in front of my hotel and left the slumbering angel in the car—no point in trying to carry his celestial ass. Besides, the thought of trying to get him inside made my already sore head throb.
As I walked inside, the bell above the front door faithfully jingled. With a whoop, I sat behind the secondhand IKEA desk that served as my reception. Whatever would happen next, I would deal with it—if not only to protect my friend, but also the other Others living in my hotel. After all, I once made a promise to this girl whom I love very much.
I surveyed my desk. Bills, bills, bills and more bills. Electricity, water, gas, unpaid taxes—hell, one of them was a garbage-collection bill for unnatural biowaste left in a dumpster by the demigod CaCa who lived in my basement. There was a particularly vile letter from the landlord stating, in no uncertain terms, that he’d “rain holy hell on my ass” if I missed another rent payment. Well, screw him … He was a racist, or rather an Otherist, and I was the only human stubborn or stupid enough to take on this place. Given his limited options, I knew he would always choose to rent to a late-paying human than a prompt, responsible Other. Before Hell was shut down, there was a special kind of place for assholes like him.
Speaking of Hell and assholes, what happened to all the human souls that didn’t return after the GrandExodus? Not a single human returned. Ghosts and ghouls came in legions, but the actual Heaven and Hell occupants—not one came back. Why? No one knows. There are two theories as to what happened to them: either they were taken with the gods, or they were extinguished. But whenever you start to think about why the gods did what they did, questions only lead to more questions. Screw it—I didn’t have time to engage in a solo philosophical debate. With my growing debt, there was a real chance I couldn’t keep this place open for another month, let alone the rest of the year. Unless I found a way to pay some of these bills off and a steady flow of income, I was sunk. Bella—damn it—how did you manage to keep this place above water?
“Ahem,” a voice said behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to know it was Judith, my once human, but now poltergeist, mother-in-law. I had once joked with Bella that if anyone hated me enough to come back from the dead to haunt me, it would have been her mom. Seems the joke was on me, because that’s exactly what she did. After the GrandExodus happened and the magic ceased, Judith rematerialized. Suddenly all those moments when I’d go cold for no reason or socks went missing from the wash made sense.
“Judith, I’m sorry if I woke you,” I said, “but it’s five in the morning, so if this can wait …”
The ghost gave me a disapproving look. “It’s doing it again,” she interrupted, her voice dripping with disdain.
I didn’t need clarification—she was referring to Astarte, the succubus who lived in room 5. For the uninitiated, a succubus is a creature that feeds off of sex, literally sucking your life’s energy out of you. Like a vampire, but with orgasms. Lots of orgasms. Of course, these days she no longer fed directly from sexual energy—but that didn’t mean she still didn’t get what she needed from sex. She used her talents to earn money, which she used in turn to purchase what she needed to survive—food, water, shelter. Lingerie. As far as Astarte was concerned, very little had changed in this new GoneGod world.
Judith sucked air through her ectoplasmic teeth. “All that groaning, it is simply unnatural.” Bold words from a woman who floated.
“Fine, fine,” I said, “I’ll talk to her.”
“Please see that you do,” Judith said, turning to drift upstairs.
↔
Judith watched from her door as I knocked on room 5. From inside I could hear continuous sounds of moaning and groaning as several voices continued their nightly pleasure, undisturbed by my knock. I banged on the door again, louder this time. The voices stopped for a moment; there was a rustling pause, then the moaning quickly reached its previous crescendo.
“Astarte,” I yelled.
Before I could knock again, the Other opened the door. When she saw me, she leaned against its frame as if presenting herself to me. She was wearing a nightgown that accentuated lean, small hips that subtly suggested that if you were horizontal and near them, all would be right with the world. Lush, brunette tresses rested perfectly on her shoulders. She wore an elegant, lacy tank top just transparent enough that a hint of her dark nipples peeked through from atop her small, perfect, perky breasts.
I looked past her and saw several writhing bodies, all intertwined in the ecstasy embrace she hosted. She closed the door just enough so that I could no longer see the bodies, but wide enough that I could hear all the bliss going on inside. From within, a distant voice said, “Astarte, where are …?” The voice drew in a breath before slowly exhaling with a flesh-filled “Oh …”
Astarte gave me a knowing smile as I tried to focus on her. She pulled out a cigarette from only the GoneGods knew where and placed it between ruby lips—lips that could do a lot more than hold a cigarette. Lips that most men would sell their left foot to have on theirs. Fire from her lighter illuminated rosy cheeks that bracketed her sensual nature with a false sense of innocence.
There was nothing innocent about Astarte.
“No smoking inside, Astarte. You know that,” I said, doing my best to not look at the A-cup angel’s breasts. I reminded myse
lf that there was no evidence that she was actually a she. And without the tell-tale signs of gender, this Other skirted the edges of male-female perfectly. Breasts that may or may not exist underneath a loosely fitting nightshirt. A long sensual neck with enough bulge to it that it might be an Adam’s apple—but, then again, might not. Arms that were muscular but tender, hair that was lush but somehow masculine. Not that being androgynous did anything to diminish this Other, who was wildly tantalizing. I had no doubt that there were many who saw Astarte as male, female and Other, and reminded myself that I only saw Astarte as a she because, well … I like boobs. There, I said it.
“Yes?” Astarte said, taking a long drag on her cigarette.
“Come on,” I said, “you know the rules. Put it out.”
“Oh my, Jean—always with the rules.” She let out a sensuous puff of white smoke that just made you wish you were in her cloud of heaven. I shot her a look that said it wasn’t working. I was lying. She opened the door just wide enough for me to see four other bodies all writhing and reeling, and dropped her cigarette into a lipstick-stained wineglass. “Happy?” she asked as she blocked my view again.
I nodded and said, “There’s been a complaint about the …” But before I could say “noise,” a loud groan bellowed out of the room, making my point for me.
Astarte chuckled. “I told her she could join,” she said, looking at Judith behind me. “One without legs could be an interesting … asset.”
Judith snorted with disgust and floated through the door.
Astarte chuckled and then, looking me up and down, she gave me a disapproving look. “You look like hell.”
“Headache and Penemue,” I said. I didn’t need to say more.
“What has that devil done now?” Astarte chuckled, her posture too perfect. When she stood, her back arched just enough to push out her breasts, accentuating them so that any sane human wondered exactly what they must look like underneath that delicate sheath of lace. But it was more than that. The way she held herself made every article of scanty clothing hang on her in such a way that pronounced every curve, every dimple, every bump, driving her admirers to a maddening frenzy of lust. She did not light a cigarette, she ignited it. She did not brush back her hair, she sculpted it. She did not smile at you, she inflamed you.