by Adam Ingle
The Weasel made to backhand him again, but stopped with his hand pulled back. He stroked his muttonchops, smiling at Mestoph’s flinching.
“What do I want with a useless, disappointing never-was of a Demon?” he asked in mock contemplation. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you were doing down there in the Hall of Records?”
“I was doing some last minute taxes,” said Mestoph with a smile that was met with a quick openhanded slap from the opposite direction as the others. The Weasel’s unusually long fingers left long, stinging marks around Mestoph’s ear and eye, as well as the rest of the left side of his face. It brought involuntary tears to his eyes, but he tried to shake them off.
“Listen, Mestopholes. We already know your little fairy friend stole a Prophecy. Add an Omen to that and you two would be holding on to some serious power. All I want to know is why. And why a used one? It’s useless.”
Mestoph arched a brow in genuine surprise. He knew Heaven would figure out they were missing a Prophecy pretty quickly, he didn’t realize they would connect him to the crime this fast. Especially since he just stole the Omen. So then who was the “we” that the weasely guy beating the crap out of him referred to?
“Who are you?” asked Mestoph.
“My name is Atreyus.”
“What the Hell is going on?” shouted Stephanie as she looked down at the little Scotty dog.
“What was that thing?” she asked, just as Sir Regi was about to answer her first question.
“What are you doing here?” She continued the tirade of questions as Sir Regi just stood there waiting for her finish.
“Are you done?” he asked once she was silent for more than a second. When she didn’t answer he continued, “That thing was either a Seraphim or a Nephilim. It’s hard to tell in the dark. Regardless, it seems to want you dead, which means you’re special. To someone, at least. I came to warn you,” Sir Regi added, though warning her was the last thing on his mind. “You have unknown friends that can help you.”
Sir Regi spun a series of spontaneous lies about being part of a secret order sent to protect her, how she played an important part in some unknown plot, and how he and his friends could keep her safe. After giving away a few honest details, like the fact that Marcus was involved, she agreed to meet her new friends.
What Sir Regi neglected to say was that whether it was a Seraphim or a Nephilim determined whether she was important to someone in Heaven or Hell, respectively. Neither strayed far from their inner circle unless dictated by God or Satan, or if the balance of Good and Evil were suddenly skewed in one direction or the other. The Seraphim and Nephilim were the highest order of creatures in Heaven or Hell, and they were charged long before the Ancient Agreement to keep the Holy Order in balance. That had largely been marginalized by Freewill International and the Ancient Agreement and they spent most of their time singing the praises of their masters. What interest they could have in an ordinary barista Sir Regi wasn’t sure, but he was sure it wasn’t coincidence that she played a part in Mestoph and Leviticus’s scheme.
The connection clicked in Mestoph’s head: Atreyus was known in certain circles to do freelance work for Agents of Heaven Inc. Specifically St. Peter. It was assumed that Lucifer was aware of Atreyus’ actions and was sanctioning them on some level, if only by not stopping him. This was enough of a connection for Mestoph to assume that St. Peter was on Leviticus' tail, and, as a result, now his. Mestoph had heard what he needed and taken enough of a beating for one day. As Atreyus went on talking about some great plan— Mestoph honestly wasn’t listening—he popped a cufflink out of his sleeve. Having done this more than once—it was one of the reasons he made sure to always wear cufflinks—he quickly and quietly unlocked the cuffs behind his back.
Mestoph started to laugh, wearing a large smile that showed off a mouthful of teeth. This stopped Atreyus’ seemingly rehearsed speech. He looked over at Mestoph, still lying on the couch but now with a ridiculous grin. “And just what the Hell is so damned funny?” he asked.
“You think yourself some great villain, but you hit like a fucking pussy. You hit like my accountant,” said Mestoph, though his accountant had been a champion Nazi boxer, so that wasn’t exactly the insult it seemed.
Atreyus looked at Mestoph for a moment and then sighed, shaking his head as he walked over.
“Some people just have no respect for a good monologue,” Atreyus said, more to himself than to Mestoph. He reared back to give his captive a proper swing, but as he reached the apex of his backswing, Mestoph jumped up and decked Atreyus with a two-fisted hammer swing.
The Weasel’s surprise and off-center balance, combined with the hefty punch, sent Atreyus sprawling to the floor. Mestoph ran over and punched him again, and although it was awkwardly delivered, the Demon not being used to boxing someone lying on the ground, it had the desired effect and knocked Atreyus out cold.
Mestoph quickly removed the other cuff from his wrist and put handcuffed Atreyus to the frame of his sleeper sofa in the corner of the living room. He didn’t want Atreyus destroying his favorite couch, plus the sleeper sofa was considerably sturdier and heavier. Mestoph looked at the floor and saw the baseball bat Atreyus had used to knock him. He realized that he’d been beaten with his own bat. He looked back at Atreyus, who still appeared to be unconscious, and nudged him with the bat. No response. Mestoph went to the fridge and grabbed one of his precious beers, the only cold drink in the place, popped the top, and poured it over Atreyus’ head.
The Weasel jerked awake and sputtered as beer went in his eyes and mouth. Mestoph gave him a few moments to look around and take his bearings, and then swung heartily at his head. Blood sprayed the wall to his left, and Atreyus screamed. His scream faltered for a moment as both Atreyus and Mestoph noticed that his long jaw now hung awkwardly to one side. The pain of his shattered, dislocated jaw hit him, and his scream rang out again with renewed anguish. A second swing took the jaw off, and Atreyus passed out, mid-scream, almost before the jaw hit the ground.
Mestoph took one last swing with all the power that his pure Demon blood granted him. There was a crack that would have sent a stadium to its feet cheering, though the blood and the head flying through the air would have caused the crowd to pause at least momentarily. Atreyus’ head slammed into a bookshelf, knocking Mestoph’s collection of vintage tin rocket ship toys off, and then fell to the ground with a wet thud. Mestoph, his floor, his couch, and his wall were covered in blood, but Atreyus was dead. The weasely man’s soul, headless like his body, floated up. He flipped Mestoph off as he vanished. It would take a while for his soul and body to get recycled—and there was no doubt he’d be returning to Hell—but it would give Mestoph plenty of time to get out and warn Leviticus. This would push their schedule up a bit, but it wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle.
Mestoph wiped his bloody hands on Atreyus’ sweater and then rummaged through his pockets, finding a cell phone, and then dashed out of his apartment. He dropped his own phone down a garbage chute as he tried to walk quickly but nonchalantly down the hallway. There was a good chance they were tracking his phone, so he flipped open Atreyus’ and dialed an all-too-familiar number.
“They’re on to us, Leviticus,” Mestoph said into the cell phone as he left his apartment.
Chapter 6
...is without its faults
It was almost one a.m., and Mestoph and Leviticus were standing at the partially opened door of Marcus’ apartment. He stared blankly at his visitors, trying to decide if he had heard what he thought he had heard. Luckily, one of them repeated it.
“We need to talk to Sir Regi,” said Mestoph.
Unfortunately, it didn’t make any more sense to Marcus the second time. He looked down at the little dog at his feet, who was obviously paying close attention to what was going on.
“You want to talk to my dog? My little Scottish terrier dog? Well...by all means. Talk away,” Marcus said as he stepped aside
. There was a brief pause, and he looked down at Sir Regi. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Well, you could let them in first,” said Sir Regi.
Once Marcus finally accepted the fact that Sir Regi could talk, or at least had stopped staring at him without speaking or blinking, he let Mestoph and Leviticus into his apartment. He sat on the arm of a small leather chair, trying to comprehend all that was going on. Sitting on his old beige couch were two people who claimed to be from the Afterlife, and his best friend and companion of many years (who just happened to be a dog) was standing on top of the coffee table and chatting with them about the end of the world.
“So let me get this straight: there's an impending catastrophe of an unknown nature that involves all of us and the barista at my usual coffee shop, and we need to go…where now?” asked Marcus.
“We need to go to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico,” said Mestoph.
“Truth or Consequences? What the Hell is in Truth or Consequences?” asked Marcus.
This was the part that neither Leviticus nor Mestoph were really sure about. How do you explain to someone—who was only just coming to terms with a talking dog and an ominous, vaguely apocalyptic, and completely fictional conspiracy—that Purgatory exists, is on Earth, and happens to be a tiny, dusty desert town in New Mexico?
“It's where Purgatory is located. Someone there can help us. But we have to get to him before they get to us.”
In the story Leviticus and Mestoph had told Marcus, “they” were a shadowy fifth column in the Afterlife—in telling their story, they had slyly evaded mentioning a Heaven or Hell and left everything under the nebulously defined Afterlife—that was trying to bring about the end of humanity so that they could have Earth all to themselves. Whatever catastrophe was planned was to be the first domino. It was basically just a hodge-podge of bullshit conspiracy theories that they were making up on the fly. Leviticus left most of it to Mestoph since he was much more versed in the art of lying.
Marcus was quiet for a few moments. His initial hope that this had all just been a very vivid, unexplainable dream had long since evaporated, and he was now trying to decide if he had just gone crazy in the middle of the night. Since he desperately wanted to be sane, he decided to just go with it and see what happened. Though he needed one last thing.
“Prove you're from the Afterlife,” he said.
Leviticus and Mestoph looked at each other and smiled.
“Follow me,” Mestoph said as he walked to the door outside.
Mestoph led them all, including Sir Regi, to a small patch of grass outside Marcus’ apartment and told them all to hold hands. Sir Regi hopped up into Marcus’ arms, and then the three men clasped hands.
There was a pop and a puff of smoke, and suddenly Marcus found himself not in his apartment but in a small, dimly lit room with brushed steel walls. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the low light, but as they did he noticed that the only exit was a giant and insanely complicated safe door—and they seemed to be on the wrong side. There was a glass panel across the entirety of the mechanism and behind it were hundreds, if not thousands, of gears, all polished to a shine even with the meager light.
They were inside a safe; Marcus was sure of it. Mestoph and Leviticus were just standing there, both with their arms folded across their chests. Mestoph motioned behind Marcus. When he turned around, he saw a large display case that contained several regal looking crowns made of gold and jewels with little crosses pattée and four fleurs-de-lis atop them. There was an old wooden throne sitting against the back wall, with a number of ceremonial swords mounted on racks to either side of it.
“Are these...you know?”
“The Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Yes, these are those,” said Leviticus.
Marcus’ eyes widened as he took a second sweep of the room. They had just teleported thousands of miles from his apartment to the Tower of London. He also considered the fact that this was the first time he had ever left his home town. At least now he could say he was a world traveler.
“Can I touch them?” Marcus asked.
Leviticus and Mestoph looked at each other and shrugged. Mestoph walked over to the display case, waved his hands like a magician, and then tapped the top twice. He motioned to Marcus to have at it. Marcus reached for the case with trembling hands, pausing a moment to give one last look for approval from Mestoph and Leviticus, and then lifted the glass off the display. He set it down gingerly and then delicately picked up the Imperial State Crown.
“Go ahead, put it on. Grab a scepter while you're at it. Then we've got to run. We've got a lot to do tonight,” said Leviticus.
While Marcus was picking out a scepter to match the crown, Sir Regi, who had been remarkably quiet, ambled over to Mestoph and Leviticus and hopped up on the arm of King Edwards’s coronation chair.
“These aren't the real Crown Jewels, are they?” he whispered.
“Hell no,” said Mestoph quietly. “These are props for a heist movie that a college student is working on. We're like, ten miles down the road.”
They all stood outside Stephanie's window: Mestoph, Leviticus, Marcus, and Sir Regi. Sir Regi had told Stephanie in her dream to expect them at any moment, but he didn't realize it would be only a few short hours later. He had also told Mestoph and Leviticus about the Nephilim, and they in turn had told him about Atreyus and St. Peter. Marcus had still been in a bit of a confused funk during this part of their talk, so they decided to keep it vague for him as well as Stephanie. But they couldn't just shine over the fact that they needed to leave—tonight. Killing Atreyus only bought them an hour or two, which was up by now. Regardless of whether Atreyus ever got free, neither Mestoph nor Leviticus were convinced that St. Peter would wait for confirmation to make a move.
Stephanie looked out from her bedroom window and saw Marcus, who was wearing an ornate crown and holding onto a bejeweled scepter, and Sir Regi. With them were a black man with long dreads and a trench coat and an olive-skinned man with a long, flowing white robe. The sprinklers were going off around them, and they were backlit by the streetlamp. They looked like a rather pathetic, motley group of super heroes—or criminals.
She vaguely remembered seeing the two mystery men once or twice at the coffee shop over the last few days. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and unlocked the door to let them in. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was being so trusting but figured it was probably because she knew Marcus was harmless. She assumed anyone with him would be as well.
She started a pot of coffee and glanced at the clock on the front of the pot. It read 2:33 a.m. Even in the middle of the night—or the morning—it was still just like being at work. Here she was, making coffee for a group of people she hardly knew. In fact, it seemed to her that the one she knew best of the group was the dog. Everyone seemed to be waiting for the coffee, so they remained silent until Stephanie laid out several empty cups and a pot and let them take care of themselves. She stared at Marcus, who was still wearing the crown and had the scepter sitting in his lap. Now that she saw it closer, she noticed that it was incredibly detailed. The gold and jewels on both looked real.
She nodded at the scepter and asked, “What's with the regal get-up?”
Marcus looked at the scepter and then at Mestoph and Leviticus. They either didn't pick up on the non-verbal communication or didn't care.
“They're part of the Crown Jewels,” he said, shrugging.
Stephanie arched a brow, but Marcus didn't offer any further explanation.
“So you show up in the middle of the night with two residents of the Afterlife, a talking dog, and the Crown Jewels and expect me to take your word and runaway to some shithole town in New Mexico?”
When they left thirty minutes later, Marcus was no longer wearing his royal vestments. He had felt guilty about stealing from the Queen. Stephanie, however, was carrying a small gold orb with a jeweled b
and down the center and a bejeweled cross at its top. She also had a small travel bag with her.
“So if you can just pop us here and there and everywhere, why are we outside?” she asked as they stood in her front yard in the pre-dawn darkness.
“The popping here and there causes a quick decompression and then re-compression of the immediate area, along with a fair amount of smoke. It's been known to cause small buildings to...well…” Leviticus paused for a moment.
“They kind of explode,” said Mestoph, and the group disappeared into a puff of smoke with a small cork-gun of a pop.
Chapter 7
Once Upon a Town
They stood at the top of a tall hill overlooking the city of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. A water tower decorated with a typically Southwestern motif of eagle feathers, dream catchers, and Kokopelli in pastel colors stood on the hill with them, watching the sun rise in the east. Down amongst the small, blandly colored houses and the sickly beige dirt roads, it was a calm and still somewhat cool morning. Up on the hill, there seemed to be a permanent gusting of wind that sent hot air into everyone's nostrils and was already whipping up a small swirl of sand around them.
They weren't up there to enjoy the view; they were trying to find a Nazi. Not just any Nazi, though—the Nazi.
“You could have told me that your forgery artist and hacker extraordinaire was Hitler,” Leviticus whispered to Mestoph.
Mestoph stopped squinting at the houses down below and stared at Leviticus blankly.
“Would you have gone along with it if I had?”
When Leviticus just sighed, Mestoph smiled. “That's what I thought,” he said, and he went back to squinting at the grid of streets below them.
Considering most of Truth or Consequences fit in a two mile by one mile rectangle, comprised of a compact grid of streets, and that the view from the hill gave them sight of most of it, it should have been easy to spot the Nazi house from a couple hundred drably painted houses with nothing more than rocks and cacti for decoration.