by Brian Fuller
Andromeda was a blank, a rarity in the Michaels. Mars had always wanted to steal blanks from the Gabriels. Since he was Grand Archus, it looked like he had gotten his wish. She looked built for war—athletic and stout, her blonde hair cropped short. She had a midwestern farm-girl vibe, but her blue eyes smoldered with the same focused “I’m here to kill Dreads” look Shujaa’s did. All business, all the time. Argyle had to like that, too.
Argyle lined them up in front of the tent, and Shujaa fell in with them. Helo jogged over and stood next to Faramir, everyone throwing him looks of disbelief, save Sparks, who grinned wickedly. Argyle’s face was pinched in disgust.
Helo snapped to attention. “Reporting for duty as ordered, sir.”
“I don’t want you in this unit,” Argyle said.
“Grand Archus Mars does,” Helo said.
“He is Unascended!” Shujaa said. “He can—”
Argyle’s fiery gaze fell on Shujaa. “I don’t care who he is or what he can do. I don’t want him in my unit. I will speak with Grand Archus Mars immediately. Fall out.”
Argyle stormed off.
“You just can’t stay away, can you?” Faramir said before striding off to his tent.
Andromeda gave him the once-over and then followed Argyle, but Sparks and Finny walked in his direction. Finny wore a half smile, but Sparks was grinning ear to ear, a challenge in his eyes. Shujaa stood behind both of them, gaze watchful.
“Well, well,” Sparks said, hands on his hips. “An Unascended. I hope you realize that all this Angel Born, Unascended business doesn’t mean I don’t owe you one, right? You know what I mean? You remember the facial adjustment you gave me in the theater?”
Sparks used his Speed to go for the BBG at his hip, and Helo got the pleasure of using the same gift, one he had coveted for a good while. Before Sparks could get the gun up to his face, Helo had grabbed Sparks’s wrist and pushed it high and away. The weapon fired, the sound booming through the forest. Before Sparks could fight it, Helo flared his Strength and thrust kicked Sparks right in the abdomen.
Sparks bent in the middle and flew backward ten feet past Finny, skidding along the ground and then rolling over his pack. He ended up at a grinning Shujaa’s feet. Sparks’s BBG lay on the ground to his side.
Sparks got up, expression the happiest Helo had ever seen it. But the piercing hunter’s glare was still there. “Yes!” he said. “That’s the stuff!” The man unclipped his pack and gun belts and dropped them to the ground. “Let’s have a go, you and me.”
Like a shot, Sparks blasted forward into a Speed-powered flying knee. Helo barely had time to get Toughness up before the knee drilled him in the gut and sent him backpedaling into the trunk of an Elm tree. A crowd was gathering, but Sparks didn’t give Helo the time to think about it. He rabbit punched using Speed, and Helo kept his hands up to absorb the punches. Keeping up Toughness kept the damage down, but the blur of fists was disorienting. Then Sparks drilled him with one hard overhand to the head, having substituted Strength for Speed. A good trick.
Toughness notwithstanding, Helo staggered to the right, out into the ruts of the road, using the momentum to retreat for distance. Sparks came again, a speeding blur. While he knew it wouldn’t hurt, Helo Angel-Fired him to the face, wiping out his vision, stepped to the side, and Strength kicked him to the knees. Sparks must’ve gotten his Toughness up because his knees didn’t snap backward. But he did take a nasty trip to the ground, face-first.
Helo backed away, hands up. “Enough.”
Sparks Strength pushed with his arms, body hinging upward at the feet to standing. That was a new trick too. “No.”
He Sped forward again, arms like a linebacker going for the tackle. Helo Strength jumped him and spun, Sparks turning and darting forward at him again. The man was relentless. Helo pivoted and delivered a Speed-powered back kick that sent Sparks stumbling backward. But almost before Helo could put his foot down, Sparks was there with a front-thrust kick that put Helo halfway to the supply tent on his back.
The crowd oohed.
Helo craned his neck up, and sure enough, Sparks was airborne on a trajectory to body slam him. Mistake. Helo got his legs up and bent them. With Strength, he leg pressed Sparks twenty feet up into an elm tree, to the enjoyment of their audience. Using Toughness, Sparks dropped down, landing on his hands and knees. The Brit didn’t hesitate, launching off like a sprinter on crack. Helo ignited his own Toughness and leaned forward, bracing himself—Sparks was going to hit a brick wall.
But at the last moment Sparks dropped and did a foot-first baseball slide. It was Helo’s turn to eat mud as his legs were swiped out from under him. He crashed to the ground with a splat and rolled over, thinking Sparks would try to body slam him again. But this time, Helo found him skyward and coming straight down with his boot toward Helo’s face. Helo used Speed to flinch right, but the boot caught him on the left shoulder. Without Toughness, it popped out of socket. The awkward fall sent Sparks off to his left.
Helo rolled over and grabbed Sparks’s boot with his good arm, and then really powered Strength to roll over and fling him spinning sideways into the same elm tree. It quivered with the impact, and Helo thought more than just a branch had snapped when Sparks hit it.
“What is going on here!” Argyle yelled.
Helo picked himself up off the ground. His black fatigues and shirt were a mess. Sparks wandered over, a satisfied grin on his face.
Argyle marched up to them, neck bulging. “I said, what’s going on here?”
Helo glanced at Sparks. Sparks shrugged.
Argyle’s arm shot out, pointing down the road. “To the command tent, both of you!”
Chapter 16
Melody
Helo stood at parade rest next to Sparks. He couldn’t get his dislocated and quite possibly broken shoulder to work, so his left arm just hung there. Grand Archus Mars and Archuses Magdelene and Ebenezer still sat at the same table as they had before, and each looked annoyed as Argyle leveled his complaints.
“And this is why I don’t want him on my squad!” Argyle said. “My team has had no discipline issues since Helo left, and the moment he’s back, a fight breaks out.”
“Wasn’t a fight,” Sparks said.
“Oh, really?” Argyle said, spinning around. “Then what do you call it, Sparks?”
Sparks shrugged. “Training, sir. Keeping the old hand-to-hand skills sharp, you know? At this rate we’ll be out of ammo in a few weeks, so best to—”
“You don’t expect me to believe that, right?” Argyle said. “Who started it? Out with it!”
Grand Archus Mars stood, lips a thin line. “Commander Argyle, I’ll take it from here. You are dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” Argyle stormed off, muttering under his breath.
“Don’t think he’s fit for command,” Sparks said. “He’s not been the same since the Pit.”
“You want command, Sparks?” Mars said. “Is that what I’m hearing?”
Sparks shrugged. “Yes, sir! I think I could teach you Yanks a thing or two.”
Mars just stared, dead-eyed, at Sparks for a few moments, then exhaled. “Look, are you two good?”
“Yes, sir,” they answered in unison.
“Good,” he said. “You cause any more problems for Argyle with your ‘training’ and I’ll have you cleaning every single muddy boot in this camp. We need discipline right now, not a couple of punks, understood?”
“Yes, sir,” they answered.
“They look so contrite,” Magdelene said with a soft laugh, turning back to a tablet.
“Get out of my sight,” Mars said.
Helo turned to go, and Sparks slapped him on the back as he walked past. “Still owe you a bullet to the face.” Helo shook his head. Maybe he should let Sparks do it so he would be satisfied.
Melody was walking quickly up the road toward them, Sparks giving her the once-over before wandering off. She was biting her lip, eyes down and unfocused. She finally
looked up, and her pace slowed.
“There you are,” she said. “I heard you got into a fight. Are you okay? I mean, I know people are angry about you and Aclima and everything, but they wouldn’t bully you? Not Ash Angels—your arm!”
He stopped in front of her. “I’m fine. It wasn’t a fight. It was more like . . . an initiation. I’m good.”
“You sure?” she said, inspecting his floppy limb.
“Just dislocated, I think.”
She grabbed it gingerly. “Maybe I can fix it.” After yanking it up, down, and all around, all she got was uncomfortable popping noises.
“It’s all right,” he said. She fell in at his side as he started down the road. “I’ll find someone who can heal around here and get it fixed up.” He looked down at his mud-smeared clothing. “No laundromats nearby?”
“No,” she said. “Lots of creeks and ponds. It’s the drying part that doesn’t work so well. I’d wait till it stops raining. So, you coming tonight?”
“I’ll be there.”
“And I’d love to shoot with you sometime. Goliath and Shujaa have taught me so much! . . . What? You’re making this . . . face.”
“I just like you with a guitar in your hands,” he said. “I don’t think Dolorem wanted a soldier’s life for you. I don’t either.”
She folded her arms. “Dad gave me a sanctified katana. I think he wanted me to use it.”
He blinked. “You have it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “They took it after they caught you and put it in the reliquarium. They recovered quite a few old artifacts and sanctified weapons after Deep 7 went down. Luckily my katana was one of them. Oh! And I’ve got the two other katanas—yours and Aclima’s. Anyway, Goliath taught me the katana too. I don’t know if I’m as good as you are, but I’d like to find out.” She bumped him playfully, and he gave her another look. “What? Look, I am not some little girl you have to protect anymore, got it?”
Helo glanced at her. How could he explain? If Dolorem had known how bad it would get, he would never have dared give her that sword. “I don’t think you’re a little girl, Tela.”
“I’m glad you got that figured out. And it’s Melody. See you tonight!”
Helo thought it fitting that Lear would be the one to inspire the heavens to quit the miserable drizzle. For the first act of the night, his Ash Angel father launched into a throaty version of “The Sun will Come Out Tomorrow” from Annie. While the sun had long since dipped below the trees, it was the moon that got the curtain call when the clouds pulled away. It was like someone had lifted the lid off a box they had all been stuffed in.
The clearing where the show took place wasn’t ideal. It was small, the view from the back interrupted by soaring tree trunks. To create a stage, they had draped white sheets between four trunks and bordered it with several large branches. Four small fires at the front cast their uneven light over a crowd packed on tarps and blankets laid out on the forest floor. The popping of the fire, the smell of the smoke, and the singing gave it a summer-camp feel, and it helped. The mood in camp had been as drenched as the ground, and as the performers came out one by one, smiles bloomed like the music was the sun rising in the morning.
Helo stood toward the front at the very edge of the crowd, leaning against a slender oak. Somewhere above him a bird inserted its song into the show, perhaps commenting on the pool of white auras stretched out before it. Animals had no fear of Ash Angels, even when those Ash Angels were laughing and applauding like thunder in the woods.
And they had good reason to applaud. There were many talented singers among the Ash Angels, but Melody, who had played her guitar and sung twice so far, had a voice that couldn’t be ignored. While cliché, he could only describe it as angelic. During her mortal life, he’d heard her perform and had listened to her albums over and over, but nothing could quite compare to the way she sounded now. All the notes ringing from her throat might be the same, but there was a quality to them he couldn’t quite explain, something almost like a small breath of Rapture. While not wrapped in a sexy dress or makeupped and hair-styled to perfection like in her mortal concerts, she was glorious.
It strengthened his resolve. He had no idea if she was assigned to a combat unit, but he was going to make sure she didn’t go mucking around with Shedim and Dreads. He’d gotten into serious trouble with Aclima by trying to protect her, but in the end he’d been right. If Aclima would have stayed hidden away with the Scholus or Sanctus somewhere, she wouldn’t be a Dread right now. He’d never told Aclima “I told you so,” nor would he, for the sake of keeping his head on his shoulders. But he had told her so.
After a rousing rendition of “Oklahoma!” from Lear, Tela appeared on stage as the last performance of the night, guitar in hand. The crowd roared, and Helo smiled—she was a hit.
She waved and motioned for quiet. “For my last number, I am going to sing a song I wrote almost a year ago. It’s a song called “Never Low.” It was for Helo, now Helo the Unascended, during a time when both of us were suffering. This one’s for you, Helo.”
She looked over at him and took a seat on an upended log they had cut and brought out for her. Then the words rose into the night.
Falling with my wings on fire
Falling like someone
Clipped a wire . . .
She was so gifted. No one moved. The chords pulsed into the night, Melody’s voice carrying effortlessly over the hushed crowd. He remembered the awe and gratitude he had felt the first time she had sung the song for him in that dingy hotel room, and those feelings redoubled now, swelling within him. He had no idea why her dreams had been so tortured with dire visions of his pain, but he was gladder than ever that she was free of them. The only thing that could have been better would have been for Goliath to leave her in the grave, never to suffer more.
I open my long-closed eyes
And turn my gaze
To the blue, blue sky
Wings once charred and undone
Unfurled and ablaze
In the rising sun.
How he longed for those days. If he could get Aclima back, if he could return her to an Ash Angel, then maybe he truly could be “never low,” like the driving end of the song proclaimed. Maybe then he could be at peace.
The standing ovation at the end shook the forest, and Helo hoped there weren’t any Dreads within ten miles the way the noise echoed and carried everywhere. Melody beamed. Such a cute girl. If he could preserve her innocence, keep that inviting, adorable smile from ever turning to the darkness and despair so many Ash Angels experienced out in the field. He wondered if she’d ever been torched, but something told him she hadn’t. No one who had ever been torched could have such bright, hopeful eyes.
As Melody left the stage, Grand Archus Mars walked onto it, stride purposeful. The relaxation and mirth of the evening hadn’t touched his serious countenance. As one, the Ash Angels stood, members of the Michaels saluting.
“Thank you,” Mars said. “Please sit.”
As the crowd returned to their blankets, Melody came up beside Helo, face flushed and bright.
“Hey,” she whispered.
“Good work,” he said.
She squeezed his unhinged arm. “You still haven’t fixed it?”
He shook his head.
“Ash Angels,” Archus Mars said, “I am grateful for those who have performed this evening. It was well done, but the time for work has come. As most of you know, we have an opportunity to hit Avadan and his accursed Sheid. Secrecy is paramount, so forgive the lack of detail, but we need everyone on this op. All Ash Angels are Michaels now. I don’t have to tell you why. If you haven’t been assigned to a combat unit, you will be tomorrow.
“I know some of you are not combat trained, but we will find work for you to support this effort. While I am confident of victory, make no mistake. It will be war. Avadan is a messed-up, cunning bastard, and it’s time for him to get burned and go to hell, where he belongs. Preparation begi
ns tomorrow, an hour after dawn. I want Sicarius Nox in the command tent then. So enjoy the Rapture, gear up, and let’s get this done. You are the best the world has to offer, and I know you won’t let me down. To war!”
“Hoorah!” erupted from the Michaels as the rest clapped.
Helo turned to go, but Melody held him up. “Stay put, okay?”
As the Ash Angels filtered out of the clearing, she started asking for those with the Healing Bestowal—when she could get a word in over everyone gushing to her about her performance.
Corinth and Scarlet approached hand in hand, as happy as anyone Helo had seen in the camp, but the second Melody noticed Scarlet, her face sobered. Scarlet didn’t seem to notice, her eyes only for Corinth, pegged to him like she couldn’t get enough. Why did that still send a pang of loss through him?
“Helo!” Corinth said. “Welcome back. Was Melody not the awesome-ist?”
“Yes, she was.”
Scarlet hugged him and returned to Corinth, Melody looking on with uncharacteristically steely eyes.
“Well, you are her biggest fan,” Corinth continued. “You know, Melody, this guy listens to your stuff all the time. I mean it was all the time when we were serving together.”
Melody’s face brightened. “Do you have the Healing Bestowal?”
“I don’t,” Corinth said. “But Scarlet does.”
“New last week,” she said. “Who needs it?”
“Helo,” Melody said dully. “His shoulder.”
“From the fight!” Corinth said. “Man, I wish I had seen that!”
“Wasn’t a fight,” Helo said. “It was a training exercise.”
Melody frowned. “You told me it was an initiation.”
Scarlet let go of Corinth. “It was a fight. Let’s see the shoulder.”
He turned toward her, and she put her hand on his arm. Her aura flared, and healing poured into him, the shoulder lifting up and popping into place.