by Brian Fuller
Then Avadan did it again. The black torch hit like a wrecking ball this time. And there Helo was, he and his brother by the stair rail looking down at their drunk father with his hand raised, his dog tags dangling on top of his white undershirt. His mother down on her butt, blouse torn, cheek already red. Her hand was raised to fend off another blow.
No. He couldn’t stay in the memory. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to. His eyes snapped open. Cowboy Avadan had his hand in Helo’s chest, pouring Vexus into his body. Helo felt unsteady, knees weak. He backed up a little, and Avadan yanked his heart out with a slurp. Helo dropped to a knee. One of the Shedim Sped forward and drilled him with a rib-snapping kick before he could even get Toughness up. He tumbled backward twenty feet, getting to know every inch of the asphalt as he went.
He got to his left elbow. His other arm looked like it had fought with an angry sledgehammer and lost. Everybody was down again. The Sheid had formed a war hammer from Vexus and was darting around pounding and de-forming sanctified weapons, their glow fading away.
Avadan examined Helo’s heart. “Not as big as I thought it would be.” He tipped his hat. “Been a pleasure, Helo,” he said with an aww-shucks country accent. “Look forward to seeing you at my first rodeo.”
And with that, Avadan and the Shedim Sped off into the parking garage. Helo ground his teeth, every swear word he’d perfected in the Marines running through his head. This couldn’t be it. Helo got up, finding his knee a bit wobbly. Avadan couldn’t get away! They might never get a better chance. But it was pointless. The Loremaster was gone, the shroud of hopelessness with him. He called a strained sounding Corinth to tell him Avadan’s last position and to keep an eye out, but Helo had a new job: get a whole crew out of the parking garage before the cops showed up.
He strobed Glorious Presence, which got some of them up, and then he used Inspire on the others. The gaping wound in his chest ached, and using the Bestowals was even harder than the black desecration had made it. He felt tired. He Hallowed the ground so Sparks could heal him, but his wounds wouldn’t close. Dark poison again. He couldn’t worry about it now. They had to get out.
Sicarius Nox crammed into the van with the Michaels. He and Melody got on the motorcycle. Melody was still a bit wobbly, but he couldn’t drive. He wrapped his good arm around her waist, and they raced out of there, cop cars whipping past as they drove away. Once they could no longer hear sirens, Melody pulled into a park and killed the motorcycle. They took off their helmets, and he grabbed his phone. He had to find out what was happening at the hospitals.
Melody grabbed his wrist. “Why didn’t the healing work?”
“Dark poison,” he said. “He didn’t want me healed. He got my heart.”
Melody’s hand went to her mouth. “No!”
“It’ll be okay, Melody,” he said. “It’ll be fine.”
“It’s not fine!” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “It will not be fine! He will kill you! This can’t happen. Won’t happen. We’re going to find Avadan. We’re going to destroy him. We’ll get your heart back right now.”
She went to put on her helmet, but he pulled it away from her. “No, Melody. We’ve got to—”
“Let go!” she said, yanking it back.
“Melody!” he said, “we’re not going to find him. Even if we do, what are we going to do? He just took out two teams of Ash Angels and the two of us like it was nothing.”
“Then I will give him my heart,” she said with barely controlled fury. “We can face him together.”
“We’re not doing that, Melody, and you know it.” He put his palm on her cheek. “We might be able to save people at those hospitals. Let’s make a difference where we can. If I don’t have much time left, that’s how I want to spend it.”
Her face was twisted in a mixture of sadness and fury. He grabbed her and pulled her close. “It’s going to work out, Melody, one way or another. Let’s go do some good, okay?”
She pulled away and wiped her eyes. “I hate this. I hate it!” She turned toward the park, and Helo pulled out his phone. Corinth sounded more relaxed than the last time he had called.
“Hey, Helo,” he said. “Sorry about Avadan. Good news. We mopped up the hospitals pretty quick. We smashed them pretty hard, and then they all ran for it. We’ve got a couple Ash Angels in police custody, but we’re working it. Let’s get back to the house and see what command wants to do.”
“Got it. See you shortly.” He hung up. At least some good had come from their plan.
Melody, pale and drawn, only nodded as he relayed Corinth’s news and instructions to her. She might have heard him, but her gaze seemed to be a thousand miles away. Silently she put on her helmet, and together they drove back into traffic.
As they passed through the corridors of the city, his thoughts didn’t turn to Avadan and whatever tortures the Dread Loremaster probably had in store for him. All he could think about was Melody in a dangerous world without him, about not knowing where she would be or who she would be with. She would be miserable, and there was nothing he could do about it.
And those thoughts punched a gaping hole in his soul to match the one in his chest. It burned. Being apart from her was wrong, powerfully wrong. Wherever his heart was, it was heavy. It was hours until the dawn would tear them apart, and he missed her already. By the time they arrived at the house, he figured he probably looked as pale and drawn as Melody. When they went inside, she held his hand fiercely, as if clenching it would keep him there when the dawn came.
When everyone had arrived and all the wounds but his were healed, Corinth tried to put a positive spin on what had happened, tried to turn it into a victory, but Helo felt like everyone was staring at his chest and the aura of poison around him. They knew what it meant. Helo had been Avadan’s prisoner before, but this was different. Avadan was fully in control now. He held the reins to all things evil, possessed unimaginable power. What he didn’t have was Melody, and Helo would do whatever he could to keep it that way.
After the debrief, he and Corinth spent time on the phone with the Archai, speculating on what Avadan would do next. Desecrate another city? Attack the Foundry? None of the above? Helo couldn’t focus. Through the window of the living room where they held the conference, he watched Melody sitting restlessly on her motorcycle, which was parked by the curb. What could he say to her? Even from a distance she exuded a kind of agitated sorrow. She was fidgety and frustrated.
The meeting ended without any firm plan, the Archai wanting to debate it more. Helo promised he would do what he could to fight Avadan and let them know where he was, but no one sounded too optimistic about his chances.
Corinth laid a man hug on him. “You’d better go take care of that young lady out there, bro. She’s going to eat that motorcycle if you leave her out there much longer.”
“Got it,” he said.
He was headed for the front door, but Shujaa intercepted him, coming up from the basement, where Sicarius Nox had set up camp. He handed him a fresh white T-shirt. “Angel Born,” he said, his brown eyes fervent, “this is not a setback. This was ordained to happen to bring about the purposes of light. You need not fear. Help and protection will be put in your path. Grace will attend you.”
Helo hoped so. Hadn’t he always escaped? Why did this time feel like such a funeral? “Thanks. Look, I need you to do something. When I’m not here, I need you to look after Melody, okay? She’s a good fighter, but she might take risks she shouldn’t, especially where it concerns me.”
“Yes,” Shujaa said. “She loves you.”
Strange as it was, to hear Shujaa say it in his matter-of-fact, deep voice hit Helo like a mortar shell. She did love him. It still made no sense. He still didn’t deserve it. But he couldn’t escape it. He could wall it off. Back away. Wait for a better time. But he no longer wanted to.
“Thanks for the shirt.” Shujaa helped him as he peeled off his jacket and replaced the holey shirt with the fresh one and then replaced
the jacket to hide his mangled arm. Much better. He slapped Shujaa’s shoulder. “Thank you, my friend.”
Shujaa smiled. “Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
“Give it to me, Angel Born.”
He handed it to him. “Good. Now go. Be with her.”
“I need to talk to Sparks,” he said. “He’s in—”
“—charge,” Shujaa said. “He knows. Now go before I throw you out the door!”
Helo left, navigating the patchy, broken walk. Melody stood and grabbed her helmet, then tossed him his. “We’re getting out of here,” she said.
“Where to?”
“You’ll see. Hop on. I’m driving.”
She went to swing her leg over the bike, but he pulled her back and patted her down until he found her phone in her jacket pocket. He tossed it as gingerly as he could into an overgrown bush by the chain-link fence running along the property line.
“I should have thought of that,” she said. “You already get rid of yours, or do I need to give you the TSA treatment to find it?”
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“I wasn’t complaining.”
“It’s gone. Let’s go.”
Chapter 35
Unity
By the time Helo downed his second jalapeño double-bacon cheeseburger, double order of large fries, and extra-large mango shake, the couple sitting to their left was starting to stare. They probably thought he and Melody were trying for some sort of gluttony world record. Melody was right up there with him, though she got the cheese fries and had eaten two triple burgers with a strawberry shake.
After they ordered two enormous banana splits, the couple shook their heads and left. They’d been eating for half an hour, Melody relaxing as the comfort food did its work. Her eyes were still tight, but Helo appreciated the effort she was making. This was for him. She wanted it to be special, a date, even.
“You know,” Melody said, “it took me a good three months as an Ash Angel to realize I could eat whatever I wanted. Dolorem’s terrible food choices while I was growing up finally made sense. Pretty smart of him to fake having a heart attack when he left me. It fit his habits.”
“My mom thought eating out was the devil’s plot to destroy the family and our health,” Helo said. “If we ever ate out, it was like we had won the lottery or done something bad and gotten away with it. Anyway, I’m glad you like this stuff. Terissa thought it was white trash to eat at places like this.”
Melody downed a big helping of ice cream. “Sounds like she was a snob.”
Helo laughed. “She wanted to be upper class, that’s for sure. Still can’t figure out why she married me.”
Melody put her spoon down and took his one good hand. His other lay conspicuously in his lap. “That’s the only smart thing she did. Can we not talk about the Wicked Witch of the West right now?”
“Melody . . .”
“Well, she is,” Melody said, letting go of his hand and picking up her spoon. “Anyway, is this what a typical first date with Trace Evans would have looked like?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “Not very original, I know, but if it didn’t work out with the girl, then at least I got to eat what I liked. You date much? I know you were on the road a lot.”
“No,” she said, spreading the whipped cream around until it evenly covered the ice cream. “My dad made me go to the prom with this kid named Robbie from our home-school group. Just for the experience, you know? Even then I felt like I was cheating on you or something.”
“That is messed up,” he said. “How could you even have known that I was a real person?”
“I just knew,” she said, pointing her fork at him. “I knew I would be with you . . .” She swallowed hard and blinked, face flushing, and wiped her eyes before a tear could escape.
He took her hand and squeezed it. “You’re with me, right here, right now.” She nodded, and he couldn’t help but think about how Cassandra and Dolorem had told him how not awakening her had delayed some celestial timetable. What was supposed to happen that was so important? Had he screwed something up?
“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t awaken you. I can see that it was a mistake now. I should have trained you. I should have been with you this whole time. I . . . I wanted to awaken you into a world without Avadan and black desecrations and, well, all of this mess.”
“I know,” she said. “You want to protect people. I love that about you, even if you overdo it. You know, your name was the first one I said after Goliath awakened me. I didn’t even care about the Ash Angel back-from-the-dead stuff. I was angry you weren’t there for maybe a month. Well, two. Goliath told me about your attempts to save Aclima. Total jealousy. But after what I saw with you and her at the river . . . well, it was beautiful. That’s when I really saw the man I had dreamed about for so long. That’s when I knew.”
“Knew what?” he asked.
“That what I had felt for you was real,” she said with a sad smile. Her voice cracked a little. “And now Avadan will take you away from me. I will search until I find you. I promise. I won’t have anyone else. If you’re gone, I will go down to the river myself so I can be with you on the other side.”
“Melody . . .”
“I’m serious,” she said, green eyes driving home the point. “I have loved being with you. And I won’t have it any other way. Not anymore.”
After that she attacked her banana split with urgency. He picked at his, thoughts wandering from Melody to his impending heart travel into danger. Maybe Shujaa was right. Maybe there was a reason—a divine purpose—that Avadan had taken his heart. He had no idea what heaven, the universe, or fate had ordained to happen, but he would just do what he had his entire life: make the best of it.
“Let’s get out of here,” Melody said. “We’ve got six months of being with each other that we’ve missed out on. Let’s go and do everything.”
He knew what she was doing—distracting herself from the inevitability of what was going to happen. But he didn’t have anything better to do. Sitting around regretting the past wouldn’t help anything.
The entire day, they did what Melody had suggested. They spent most of the daylight hours at the Waterloo State Recreation Area riding horses around lakes and through the vibrant greens of spring. She told him how Dolorem made a habit of stopping at all the state parks they could make time for, though she had never been to that one. After that, they ate out again—barbecue this time. She really was his kind of girl when it came to food.
Then they morphed into old people and caught a gory horror film. He’d taken her for the romcom kind of person, but it turned out she liked watching people get killed by the vengeful dead—which struck a little close to home. Watching her, a granny in bike leather on the edge of her seat, eyes wide, hand clawing his thigh had him laughing when he should have been disgusted.
Then he got to choose a movie, but all that was left was an animated kids show about a dolphin princess with a controlling dad who thought she should stay in the kingdom when all she wanted to do was explore . . . blah, blah, blah. To honor Dolorem, they both bought jumbo buckets of popcorn, jumbo drinks, and a package of Red Vines.
“The old people can really put it away,” one of the clerks said as they walked off. And put it away they did. Once the movie was over, they availed themselves of the theater’s bowling alley, which was a bit tricky for Helo with only one good arm. She was good at that, too, which didn’t surprise him: Dolorem was a bowling kind of guy. After a few rounds of tossing heavy balls that would have destroyed the backs of actual geriatric players, the movie theater closed.
One a.m.
They morphed back to their regular selves, and he realized the morphs now came much quicker to him than they usually did. Melody drove around the city for a while, and he put his arm around her and enjoyed her closeness. After about an hour, they gassed up the motorcycle and headed south. She pulled into the Willow Metropark Golf Course, and the
y sneaked out onto the wide expanses of grass. He let her lead, and they walked for a good mile before she found a putting green and lay down flat on her back. He settled in next to her and took her hand.
The gloomy clouds that had dimmed the entire day had only broken up a little, their movement allowing little windows of stars to slide across the sky. The clouds never allowed a complete picture of the glory above them, just fleeting hints and random glimpses. The moon was a fuzzy spot that rarely escaped the heavenly curtain.
They watched in silence as the eternal stars and the ephemeral clouds warred against each other above them. For the microsecond he had been a Boy Scout, one of the only merit badges he had earned was astronomy. But the patterns in the sky were lost to his memory now.
“I’d like to do astronomy,” he said.
Melody chuckled. “Where did that come from?”
“Think about it,” he said. “We don’t sleep. We have all this time at night. Ash Angels should be the world’s best astronomers.”
“And the world’s best lovers,” Melody said. “I guess every relationship needs someone who thinks of the sky and someone who is a bit more . . . earthy.”
He smiled. “They tell you how the whole sex thing works?”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “That’s the first thing I asked about. Wasn’t it . . . oh. It was probably the last thing you asked about.”
“No Wicked Witch of the West references. Your rules.”
She rolled over onto her side and put her hand on his chest. “I didn’t mention her. But you did feel the connection with Aclima. That’s when you found out about it, I’m sure.”
“Maybe we should stop talking about the women in my past, unless you want to dish up some details on Robbie to make it even.”
She rolled onto her back again. “Ah, Robbie. The poor guy. I’m sure he was expecting more than the very hands-off date he got. Don’t regret it. Hadn’t thought of him in years. I’m surprised I could even remember his name.”