by Brian Fuller
Linda eyed him as he approached. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah,” Helo said. “He’ll need a cab, though. Smells like he hit the bottle hard before coming here.”
Linda nodded. “Korina, can you take care of that, please?”
Korina nodded and headed to the receptionist’s desk Aclima had occupied a few minutes before.
“Anyway,” Linda said, “I’m not angry, Aclima. It’s not the first time something like this has happened. But I think it’s time for you to move on now, okay?”
Aclima closed her eyes for a moment. “I understand. Thank you for giving me a chance.”
Linda eyed her piercingly. “You’re welcome. I respect what you’re trying to do. I hope you find what you need.”
Aclima lay in the back seat of the used gray pickup truck Helo had bought with some of Dolorem’s money. Anytime they drove through populated areas, she stayed low to minimize the chance an Ash Angel would spot her red aura. And the Ash Angels were around. White auras popped up unexpectedly on street corners or in parking lots, sending a jolt down Helo’s spine every time.
Somewhere out there, Sicarius Nox was probably hunting them. Helo was sure of it. One day Argyle or Faramir or Shujaa would show up and the bullets would fly. Even if Aclima got rid of her red aura, there was no guarantee she couldn’t be turned to a Dread again. The Ash Angels wanted all of the Dread Loremasters dead. A world without Dread Loremasters meant the extinction of Shedim, so they believed Aclima had to die whether she was an Ash Angel or not, just to make sure.
Stuck at a stoplight, Helo gripped the wheel and glanced over his shoulder. Aclima’s gaze was pegged to the roof of the truck, eyes distant. How could he give her hope? Six months ago she had seemed eager to make the change. Now? She was frustrated, and with each passing day her resentment festered. Maybe it was time to take a break from the “good deeds” plan and go somewhere enjoyable without any kind of agenda. With the weather forecast hinting at snow to come, south seemed like a good direction.
His phone rang. Goliath. “Yeah?”
“Heya, Helo. Got your text. How’s she doing?”
“You can guess,” he said. “All packed?”
“Yep,” she said. “It’s all out on the curb. Paid up with the property manager. We’re good to go.”
“Be there in ten.”
Helo hung up the phone and put the truck’s visor down to block the falling sun. Goliath had been great through the whole thing. She had opted to spend her last year of Ash Angelhood helping Aclima, and Helo owed her big-time. It was a thankless job and a lot more boring than the former Michael commander had probably thought it would be.
“What are we going to do now?” Aclima said, voice flat.
“A vacation,” Helo said. “Time to relax a little. Head for a remote beach somewhere. Maybe Texas or Alabama. Sun, surf, margaritas. We’ll find you a nice bikini . . .”
He looked at her in the rearview mirror. She stink-eyed him the way she did whenever he said anything remotely flirtatious. He’d tried a pickup line on her once like he used to, and she hadn’t talked to him for two days. It stabbed him. He could understand why she wouldn’t consider a relationship in her current state, but Helo couldn’t help but think that if she would just let him into her heart a little, it would do her good. And him good. In the days leading up to Cain’s disastrous party, they’d been close. He missed it, missed her like she was then.
“Tankini, then?” he joked. Something had to break the frown on her face. “Tasteful one piece? No? Swim shorts and a T-shirt? Burkini? Come on! The beach doesn’t sound good?”
“The light’s green,” she said just before the Ford Explorer behind them expressed the same thing with a blast from its horn.
He pressed the gas pedal, traffic keeping the speed modest. “Look,” he said, keeping half an eye on her in the rearview mirror. “I think we’ve been trying too hard. Time to kill a little stress and then we’ll hit it fresh, okay?”
She exhaled and lay there, eyes still a thousand miles away. Then her head turned toward him. “You know that you’re one of the most powerful Ash Angels who has ever lived, right? So what are you doing, Helo?”
“You know what I’m—”
“You’re wasting your gifts,” she said. “That’s what you’re doing. You’re wasting your time babysitting me. The Ash Angel Organization needs you.”
“I am not going back there,” Helo said. “You know that.”
“You have to,” she said. “You know you do. Avadan is out there. Jumelia is out there. Ashakaz might be imprisoned, but she’ll pull something, trust me. You can’t tell me that someone who can kill Shedim with his bare hands and blast holy fire from his palms isn’t needed right now.”
“Cain’s gone,” Helo said, slamming on the brakes to keep from rear-ending the car in front of him. “The AAO can handle the rest just fine without me. I can help you. We can do this. I believe it.”
Aclima turned her gaze back to the truck ceiling. She was giving up. He’d preached hope and redemption to her for months, wishing he had Dolorem’s way with sermons. This was the first time she’d ever suggested he return to the AAO—like he’d want to return to an organization trying to hunt her down and kill her. They didn’t know her like he did.
Helo turned onto Galloway Street. Goliath stood on the sidewalk in front of the Sundance apartments next to three duffel bags. She’d morphed and dressed teenager, her short pixie cuts left behind for long dark hair. Helo pulled up beside her. She tossed the duffels in the truck bed and put the katanas on the floor in the back before hopping in the front seat.
“Heya, guys,” she said.
“Hey, Goliath,” Helo said. “We all set?”
“Yep.”
Goliath had supported them for months. Helo couldn’t help but think she was sick of it. She said she believed in what he was doing to help Aclima, but Helo found Goliath’s eyes pegged to the distant horizon more and more. He was afraid her faraway gaze meant the former Michael had her mind on the same questions Aclima did: Was all the effort worth it? Would it even work?
But whatever Goliath decided to do, he wasn’t going to give up. They would take a little R & R and then get back to the good deeds.
“Hey, Goliath,” Aclima said. “Why don’t you spend the rest of your afterlife touring Europe or something? We haven’t seen any signs that the AAO knows where we are. We could drop you off somewhere. Give you some cash.”
Goliath glanced over her shoulder at Aclima and then back out the windshield. “She’s bad today. You two fight?”
“No,” Helo answered, punching the truck forward to get in front of a semi before it got to the on-ramp for I-90. “Just a setback.”
“This isn’t working, Helo,” Aclima said. It sounded like she was talking to someone else, someone only she could see on the truck ceiling. “It may take decades for me to change—if I can keep the AAO from killing me for that long. Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I can’t let you two keep this up.”
Helo pressed the pedal to the floor, truck lurching up the on-ramp. “We get to decide what we want to do with our afterlives. Remember how pissed you got when I tried to keep you from going into the field? Well, you’re doing the same thing to me. I’m going to help you. You don’t have to like it, but I’m going to stick with it until I ascend, no matter what. Understand?”
Aclima kept staring at the ceiling. Goliath put headphones in her ears, leaned her head back against the seat, and closed her eyes. Helo gritted his teeth and set the cruise control to exactly seventy-five; getting pulled over would be a major inconvenience. The license plates didn’t technically belong to the truck. He changed them out in Walmart parking lots every few weeks or so.
The pavement hummed by, sun dipping so low the visor did little good now. He fished for some sunglasses in the glove box and put them on, adjusting the seat back a fraction. Movement in the rearview mirror caught his attention—Aclima sitting up and checking
her watch. Then she stared down the road with those six-thousand-year-old eyes, seeing something he couldn’t.
The sun had almost disappeared behind the horizon when she leaned into the space above the center console, her hair swishing across his cheek.
“Helo?”
“Yeah?” he said.
“You have been more than good to me.” Her hand ran along his arm. It had been so long since she had touched him in a familiar way. “I wanted . . . well . . .” Her voice caught for a moment. “Just, thank you. I’m sorry.”
“There’s no reason . . . Wait. Sorry for what?” She’d done something.
She kissed his cheek. “Get the rest of the Loremasters for me. When it comes time for you to ascend, go to the river where Dolorem ascended. I’ll be there.”
“What have you—”
The sun slipped below the low hills in the distance like a swimmer ducking beneath a wave, and she was gone. Her empty shirt slipping down across the console.
Chapter 2
Sparks
Helo slammed the steering wheel with his palms and angled over to the median, slowing. He hoped the cops were on a holiday. He was not going to wait for the next exit to turn around.
Goliath pulled her headphones out. “Did she—”
“Yep,” he said. Unbelievable. How could she do this to him? “She probably left the heart in the apartment. Or at the shelter. Call Linda and see if they’ve spotted her.”
Goliath didn’t move. The truck shook and bumped as it plowed through the median’s uneven ground and brown grass.
“Do it!” Helo said. Two cars honked at him as he pulled back onto the highway heading east.
“Helo,” Goliath said softly.
“Don’t say it, Goliath.”
She turned toward him. “Someone’s got to. You’ve got to let her go, Helo. It’s a fool’s errand. She doesn’t want your help anymore, and you’ve got better things to do.”
“You two been talking? You help her do this?”
Goliath’s eyes turned flinty. “No, Helo, I didn’t, and I think I’ve earned a bit more respect than that.”
She was right. “Look, I’m sorry. You’ve been great through this whole mess. But if you don’t want to do this anymore, I’m not keeping you here. I . . . I’ve got to do this. I think I can help.”
The speedometer read ninety, and he backed it down.
“I know you care for her,” Goliath said. “But like it or not, I think you being with her is part of the problem.”
“How do you figure?”
Goliath folded her arms and leaned back. “Look. You’re a big reason why she changed into an Ash Angel in the first place. But being with you now, as a Dread . . . it’s hard on her.”
“She told you that?”
“No, Helo. Remember I’ve lived for over eighty years, okay? I see things. She’s doing all of this . . . stuff . . . for you. Because you want her to. That’s the problem. She’s got to find out who she is on her own. It’s like parents kicking kids out of the house to force them to grow up and find themselves. That’s what she needs. You can’t do this for her, and as long as you keep leading her around, she’ll never figure it out. Make sense?”
Make sense? He had thought he and Aclima were together on the plan. Spend time helping people. Focus on the positive. Why couldn’t that work? Terissa had turned from a Dread back to an Ash Angel within hours of getting away from Cain, and she hadn’t done a thing besides reunite with Corinth. But maybe whatever Cain had done to torture Aclima back into being a Dread would take another six thousand years to undo. His stomach clenched. It couldn’t be that way. He wouldn’t feel compelled to help her if it was impossible to do it.
“We made this plan together,” he said. “I haven’t been leading her around.”
“The plan needed to change,” Goliath said. “And . . . those were a couple of Michaels who just passed us on the other side.”
Helo glanced up at the rearview mirror. Yep. Ash Angel auras in the gray sedan fading away toward the west.
“How can you tell they’re Michaels?”
Goliath twisted in her seat. “Michaels aren’t Gabriels. They don’t think much about blending in. Aaaaand . . . yep. They just crossed the median like you did. You up for a little run and gun?”
Helo gripped the wheel tighter and pushed on the accelerator. “BBR’s on the floor in the back.” How had they found them? It couldn’t be coincidence that Aclima had disappeared minutes before the Ash Angel cavalry showed up to rope them in.
Goliath clambered over the seat and grabbed the gun.
The gray sedan lingered a half mile back. Helo kept the speed steady, but the sedan seemed content to keep its distance.
“They’re just spotting us,” he said. “Probably waiting for reinforcements to show up.”
“Yep,” Goliath said. “We can’t stop and look around for Aclima, Helo. We do and we’re done.”
He pounded the steering wheel and set his jaw. They had two choices. Get into some very public place to keep the Ash Angels from doing anything too crazy and hope they could get away and hole up for a while or ditch the car and head out into the vast Montana wilderness. The first would make it easier for the Ash Angels to guess their location, and the second would only work well if the Ash Angels on their tail didn’t have Speed. He didn’t.
“What are they doing?” Helo asked with another look in the rearview.
“Just hanging out back there,” Goliath said. “We’ll know it when they’re ready to grab us.”
Or not.
A semi crossed the median in a cloud of dust. Helo’s jaw dropped. No! He jerked the wheel to the right and floored it, trying to escape its path. The white aura of the driver registered a moment before the semi’s front bumper slammed into the truck bed. Shattered glass, bending metal, and cracking plastic all combined into one ear blasting crunch. Goliath screamed and then flew free of the cabin. The whirling, whipping force of the tumbling truck bashed Helo all over the car. The airbags might as well have been party balloons. This was like the night he’d died, the night he’d driven his truck into a forest. That had ended his mortal life; if he couldn’t get out of this wreck and get away, his afterlife might as well be over.
Helo squirmed as the truck settled upside down. Broken arm. Probably the shoulder too. The left leg didn’t seem quite put together either. There was no pain. He could manage. He unclipped the seat belt and tumbled in a heap onto the truck ceiling, glass from the windshield crunching under his weight. He one-arm crawled to the passenger-side window. The truck had come to rest in the brown grass to the side of the road. A clump of trees squatted at the base of a low, bare hill. Not much cover.
A car’s brakes screeched, and two doors opened. Their tail had caught them.
“Get her in the boot before anyone sees,” said a man with a British accent. “I’ll get what’s left of Helo.”
Helo wedged his way out of the busted window and belly crawled into the tall grass until he slipped into the trees.
“We got a rabbit!” the British man said, tone delighted.
Helo grabbed a branch with his good arm and pulled himself up, knee making an unsettling popping noise. Still functional but not fast. His best chance was to ambush this guy, use Strength to incapacitate him.
“Come on, Helo,” the man said. “You know you’re not going to be able to scamper off into the hills. Just come out and save me the trouble of shooting your sorry ass.”
Helo pinned himself to the tree, a scrubby cottonwood not nearly as thick as he would like it to be.
“Fine, have it your way,” the man said.
Three shots rang out. Splinters and chunks of wood flew everywhere. The wicked force of a bullet threw him to the ground. His hip. He had to move. It couldn’t end like this. He had to get to Aclima. Make her right again. He flared his Strength and goofy walked his way out of the trees, then scrambled up the hill.
Another shot rang out. The force of the hit blas
ted him to the ground. Dust kicked up around him, and he didn’t have to look to know he had a hole high up on the center of his back. One arm worked. Sort of.
Boots swished through the grass behind him. “Settle down there, Helo,” the man said. “The name’s Sparks. Nice to finally catch up with you.”
Helo opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The hole in his body must’ve taken out his lungs or his nerves.
Sparks shouldered his rifle and grabbed him by the belt, but instead of dragging him back toward the accident, he hefted him over the top of the hill and behind it, out of sight of the chaos on the road.
After hiking down the other side about halfway, Sparks dumped Helo on the ground and used his booted foot to flip him over on his back. Sparks had the Michaels military look Goliath had noticed when she had spotted him and the other Ash Angel in the sedan. His light-brown hair was just long enough to comb down, and his morph projected a seasoned look, a soldier old enough to earn a desk job but still in the field. A lean, stubbled face punctuated with dead, gray eyes regarded him with a dash of skepticism.
“Congratulations, my new friend. You just experienced a little Dread catching technique we Brits call the Gory Lorry. Love the look on the Dreads’ faces when they eat semi. Your face was pretty good too. One minute.” Sparks pressed the comm unit in his hear. “Got Helo up here behind the hill. Let’s pull him out in a chopper.”
The rest of Sparks’s sitrep was a series of “roger thats” from a conversation Helo couldn’t hear the other side of. After a moment, Sparks dug a pack of cigarettes out of a cargo pocket in his pants and lit up.
“Helo,” he said after a couple thoughtful puffs. “I thought you would be . . . bigger . . . you know? I mean, the stories! The most brilliant load of bunk I have ever heard. Killing Shedim without a sanctified weapon? Using Bestowals in desecration fields? Shooting holy fire out of your hands? I mean, come on. You Yanks do love to exaggerate.”