by Brian Fuller
Helo’s face pinched. What was this about? The Sheid did as he was told, snapping Melody’s left forearm and punching Helo square in the nose.
“Bleed, Helo!” Billy said. “And bruises, you two. Quick!”
Helo did it, staring Avadan right in his dark eyes.
“Great,” he said. “Let’s get them into position.”
Hipster hoisted both their childlike forms under its arms as Avadan opened the rear doors of the trailer and jumped down, the Sheid following. The air was thick with humidity. Night had fallen, the sounds of insects and frogs thick on the air. They were on a stretch of lonely highway somewhere. Avadan shut the doors.
Helo craned his neck around to get a better look as Hipster lugged them toward the front of the truck. To their right, a lake or pond reflected their headlights. A banged-up white pickup had pulled off the highway and parked in front of the semi, a Dread in the front seat. But what caught Helo’s attention was a gray sedan with its back end in the water, headlight beams shooting up into the sky at an angle. An unmoving woman was slumped over the steering wheel, blood matting her hair.
“I thought you said no normals would get hurt!” Helo said.
Billy waved off the accusation. “Oh, her? She wasn’t a normal. She was a Possessed. But for now, she is—was—the abusive, drunk mother who spun off the road and into the water. Her poor children are trapped in the back. How awful. In you go, my little trapped children. If you could scream and cry and holler, all the better. Put them in.”
Hipster jumped into the murky water, opened the sedan’s door, and dumped them into the back seat. Like any good safety-conscious Sheid would, it buckled them in, the water up to their bellies.
“Showtime!” Avadan yelled.
What happened next was one of the weirdest things Helo had ever seen as an Ash Angel. The Dread in the truck—dressed like a redneck—got out and darted into the water. But rather than rescue them, he reached in and snatched the dead woman’s purse. As he struggled back up to the shore, Billy Wickett jumped out of his semi.
“Hey!” Billy said. “What are you doing?”
The redneck Dread pulled a gun out of the waistband of his pants, pointed it at Billy, and fired. Avadan stumbled back, hand over his gut. The redneck turned back toward his truck. Billy rallied, charged, and knocked the Dread to the ground, smashing the man in the face over and over. The Dread went still, head lolling to one side.
Grimacing, Avadan got to his feet. He kicked the gun away and ambled toward the car in the lake while holding his gut, blood trickling between his fingers. His face was a mask of perfect earnestness and concern. “Ma’am!” he yelled frantically. He splashed into the water. “Ma’am, are you okay?”
Avadan checked her over. Only now could Helo see the Sheid through the windshield, mobile phone up, recording the whole thing. This was a publicity stunt.
Avadan took the woman’s head and lifted it. “No!” he said with pitch-perfect sadness and alarm. “You kids okay?”
The car groaned and slid backward right on cue, the clammy water rising. Melody sucked in as the water covered her heart enough to set her broken arm on fire. Helo’s busted nose made his eyes water. But like a hero, Avadan yanked the door open and hauled them both to the shore before collapsing and staring at his wound.
Hipster walked forward, and Avadan leaned up on an elbow. Somehow he was even more handsome for having been soaked in the lake. “Turn that thing off,” he scolded the Sheid. “Help me with these people!”
The Sheid shoved the phone in its pocket, and Avadan rolled onto his back. “That’s a wrap! Nicely done, though a little kicking and screaming would’ve been great. So, the police and ambulance will be here before long. Keep playing your part, and I will keep my end of the bargain. In a few hours, your nice auntie Magdelene will come to get you. Do you call her Magdelene or Maggie? Archus Ramis couldn’t pick one when I was interrogating him.”
Helo didn’t respond. Sirens wailed in the distance.
“Shiver, kids. Whimper,” Avadan admonished. “The show isn’t quite over yet.”
Chapter 37
Rising Star
It went down just like Avadan said. They got hauled off to the hospital—which was in Nashville. Helo felt used. Worse, he felt ashamed of going along with Avadan’s little play. But what could he have done? He couldn’t live with watching Melody die in a tank of water, and in the end, both of them were still alive. That was a win. Didn’t feel like one, though. So far Avadan hadn’t desecrated the city, but Helo wondered if it was only a matter of time.
Attentive doctors in blue scrubs set his and Melody’s broken bones. The nurse assured Helo and Melody a relative was on the way. After about an hour, Billy Wicket shuffled in with his IV on a pole, a young female nurse adoringly helping him along. He held his hand against a bandage beneath his gown.
“You should get back to bed,” the nurse said.
“Just wanted to see these kids, you know?” he said. “They were so brave. Hey there, kids! You doing okay in here? They treatin’ ya right?”
Helo nodded, biting his tongue.
“That’s just great,” he said. “I want to leave a little note for you to give your aunt.” He glanced at the nurse and then winced in pain, clutching his side.
“You should really get back to bed,” the nurse said with such concern Helo had to wonder if Avadan had other evil tricks up his sleeve.
“I will, darlin’. You mind getting me a paper and pen? Just want to leave my contact info for these two kids, you know? Can you help me out, sweetheart?”
She blushed. “Sure. One sec.”
She returned a moment later and handed Avadan the pad and pen. He wrote on the paper and then tore it off and folded it in half.
“There you go,” he said, placing it in Helo’s palm. Then he winked and threw them the million-dollar Billy Wickett smile. “You’re great kids. Best of luck to ya.” He turned back toward the nurse and winced. “I think you’re right. Better put me back in bed.”
They left, the nurse fawning all over her favorite patient. It was sickening. Helo unfolded the piece of paper, fully expecting “Suckers!” to be written on it. But there was a GPS coordinate and “Coming Soon!” double underlined. Avadan had even scrawled a smiley face at the bottom.
Magdelene showed up not long after. She had morphed into her thirties and wore jeans and a long-sleeved, white pullover. She played the part of concerned aunt to the letter. Hugs. Kisses. Even tears! Promises that they would be okay. She listened dutifully to the nurse’s instructions and brought a minivan around while the staff rolled Helo and Melody outside in wheelchairs.
The side door hadn’t been shut for more than a second when Magdelene said, “Okay, you two, start talking.”
Helo told her the story about the tank and about the weird bargain Billy Wickett had made with them. Magdelene handed him her phone and had him look up the GPS coordinates. The Foundry.
“So he’s promised to hand us a bunch of Dreads to kill. Sounds like another invasion, hopefully without all the clowns this time. Well, nice of him to tip us off.”
“Don’t trust it,” Helo said. “He’s not trying to help us.”
“I know,” Magdelene said. “The real question I have is for Melody. How did you get here? The after-action report said Avadan had only taken Helo’s heart. Did he get yours?”
Melody smiled and took Helo’s hand. That wonderful alive feeling was still there. “He didn’t,” she said. “It’s hard to explain, but when Helo heart traveled, I somehow heart traveled with him. We don’t know exactly how it happened yet.”
Magdelene glanced over her shoulder. “That is extraordinary . . . and wonderful. If you figure it out, let the rest of us know. That would be a useful trick. So are you two, um, together? Bonded?”
Melody looked at Helo, and he said, “Yes, we are.” It was weird coming out of his eight-year-old mouth, as was the adoring look on Melody’s six-year-old face.
Magdel
ene nodded, lips turned up in a smile. “Good.”
“So,” Helo asked, “where are we operationally?”
Magdelene’s grip tightened on the wheel, and the smile disappeared. “We’ve got Kansas City, Saint Louis, and Detroit all desecrated. Violence and unrest are surging. The outer border of the desecrations seems to fluctuate as much as two miles in and out. Not sure why. Honestly, we’re stumped. And after Avadan’s antics tonight, who knows what’s next? But what really worries me is that Helo is not dead.”
“Why?” Melody asked.
Magdelene glanced in the rearview mirror. “Avadan has to know Helo’s the most powerful Ash Angel alive. He had a chance to kill him and didn’t. That leads to one very scary conclusion: Avadan believes he is so powerful that what Helo can do doesn’t concern him.”
Helo sank in his seat a little. It was true. If the parking garage had taught Avadan anything, it was that an Angel Born was no match for him, even two Angel Born.
“Where are we headed?” Melody asked.
“The Foundry,” she said. “We’re pulling everyone back until we can get our feet back underneath us. And it sounds like Avadan’s going to bring the fun to us again, so we’ve got to fortify the area. I can’t believe he would let us kill off his army without a fight.”
“He’s definitely doing his own thing,” Melody added. “He doesn’t act much like a general in a war. He’s more like, I don’t know, a diva? I mean, what do Dreads even mean to him?”
Helo wondered about that too. The whole time Avadan had the pendant, he had used the Dreads without any thought for their numbers or safety. He had treated them like worthless automatons. It made no sense. If he could use them, why get rid of them?
“I don’t know what Dreads mean to him,” Magdelene said. “But letting us destroy them weakens his power.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want power,” Helo said. “At least not in the way we think of it. Cain used his power to collect the best of everything—money, cars, women, status symbols—to show them off to people to prove his superiority. Avadan doesn’t seem interested in that stuff.”
“I don’t think understanding Avadan is as hard as we’re making it,” Melody said. “Helo’s right. Avadan isn’t exactly like Cain, but in a way he is. At least biblically, Cain felt slighted because his sacrifice from his fields wasn’t seen as good as Abel’s. His wife wasn’t as good as Abel’s. So he spent six thousand years making sure his stuff was always better than the Jones’s stuff. Now Avadan—”
Helo saw where with this was going. “Wants attention.”
“Yes,” Melody said. “From what you’ve told me, he worshiped a father who saw him as deficient. His mother was disgusted with him. He doesn’t want domination. He wants recognition. Applause. Attention. Facebook likes. His name in lights. As for killing off his fellow Dreads, he wants what every diva wants: to be the only one.”
Magdelene was silent for a while. “Sounds like we’re all suffering because a couple of ancient men had bad self-esteem. How could someone still have unresolved daddy issues after six thousand years? We thought it was mostly impossible for Dreads to change their stripes—they are sort of frozen as who they were. But Aclima showed us it can be done. But still. Avadan can’t get over Cain’s and Aclima’s bad parenting in six thousand years?”
Helo thought he understood Avadan better than he wanted to admit. “What was your father like, Magdelene?”
“He was a great man,” she said. “Not perfect, but he tried. He was devoted to my mom and to me. Just a pillar.”
“Dolorem was awesome too,” Melody added. “Also not perfect—not by a long shot—but I always knew he cared. Always.”
“That’s great,” he said, grateful they didn’t reverse the question. But they couldn’t understand. It was easy to look at Avadan and wonder why he couldn’t get over his issues. But maybe Magdelene and Melody didn’t know how a father’s dissatisfaction and neglect could sculpt a child who forever staggered under the weight of his own insufficiency. How it punched a hole in the heart that could never quite be filled. How it turned every betrayal and rejection into an unforgiving knife cut to the soul. How when it came to bleeding, every soul was a hemophiliac.
Thinking of his own father brought a weight back to his soul. The next time he attempted to Exorcise Legion, it would show him the rest of his awful Christmas memory, the place where he had really begun to bleed. Somewhere inside, he knew he would have to face his memory and that Melody would see it. Would she think of him the same way after she saw what he had done?
They didn’t get to meditate before Rapture hit while they sat in Magdelene’s van on the shoulder of the road. Even without the preparation of meditation, the joy and Virtus flooded in like a dam had broken. His and Melody’s eyes didn’t glow, but an aura surrounded them for a good minute before fading away.
“Must be nice to be Angel Born,” Magdelene said offhandedly. Melody winked at him.
Before heading into the Foundry, Magdelene stopped in Branson, Missouri, and bought them adult clothes so they could morph back to regular size. Melody went the active-wear route again, with black leggings and a formfitting green top matching the color of her eyes. Helo joined her with some black training pants and a black, long-sleeved hoodie that didn’t make much sense given the weather, but he liked the martial-arts look of it.
For the rest of the one-hour ride, they morphed and changed, and as they pulled down the gravel road leading to the Foundry, memories of the clown attack returned. The road curved gently along the river, a canopy of trees sheltering the road from the sweltering late-morning sun.
“Can you let us out?” Melody asked. “I’d like to walk the rest of the way with Helo.”
“Sure,” Magdelene said. “Just don’t disappear on us again. And hurry. There’s a lot to discuss. Your team wants to see you again.”
“No promises,” Melody teased.
They got out, and Magdelene pulled away, gravel dust kicking up in her wake. Helo went to grab Melody’s hand, but she went behind him and hopped on his back, putting her head next to his.
“Hey!” she said after kissing his cheek. Feeling her against his back, that alive rush of sensation reminded him that they were bonded now. It had almost gotten lost in discussing all of Avadan’s machinations.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Mmmm,” she hummed pleasantly. “Our honeymoon, of course.”
“Don’t you want a wedding?” he asked. Women liked that. Terissa and her parents had put on quite a production. Too much. They’d flown everyone to California and had this whole sunset ceremony. Terissa had been decked out like a goddess. Everything was filmed and photographed and catered, with pavilions and expensive alcohol and live music. All of it scheduled down to the minute. The entire day he’d felt like an actor in a play, terrified of missing a cue.
“No,” Melody said. “Ash Angel lore says we’re one, so that’s good enough for me. Who wants to go through all that planning when there’s love to be making? When I daydreamed about you and me, we always eloped when Dad had left the semi to clean out a convenience store. You would swoop in next to the big rig on your motorcycle and carry me away into the night. What I have always wanted is a spectacular honeymoon.”
“And what does that look like?”
“A lot like you, of course,” she said, giving him a squeeze. “But in my elopement fantasies, you whisk me off to some fancy hotel—and I mean really fancy, like a pool in the room kind of fancy—and we would go to big ticket concerts and expensive restaurants. Some creeper would come on to me, and you would pound them to mush before whisking me away to our room for a night of ecstasy.”
“Branson’s just around the corner,” he said. “We could make most of that come true. Maybe not the assault part—not saying that I wouldn’t pound a creeper into mush if he laid a hand on you, because I would. But like I said, Branson’s nearby . . .”
“Right,” she said, “but here’
s the thing. Being an Ash Angel has changed everything. We don’t need to eat or sleep or use the bathroom. We don’t get cold. Bugs don’t bite us. We can walk and run forever. I’ve seen most of the big cities, but Dolorem wasn’t an outdoors kind of guy. We could hike the entire Continental Divide for our honeymoon without breaking a sweat. We could get a boat and float in the middle of Lake Coeur D’Alene for weeks and just stare at the stars. But I’m going on and on here. Where does Helo want to take his girl?”
This was one of those questions he knew he could get wrong, and if he got it wrong, he’d have to endure the sadness in her eyes for the rest of the day. And it wasn’t fair. She’d been fantasizing about this for years, and up until a few hours ago, he’d doubted he’d ever have a relationship like this again. She wanted to see if he’d been thinking about a honeymoon when Avadan had completely occupied his mind.
In truth, he wanted the same kind of out-of-the-way honeymoon he’d had with Terissa—though he wouldn’t tell Melody that. After Terissa and her parents had railroaded the wedding, they’d been nice enough to let him choose the honeymoon. Terissa had wanted what Melody had dreamed about—big cities and big hotels. But Melody was right. Being an Ash Angel did open up the possibilities, and his mind went to work.
“I like the mountains. So how’s this: a little tent high up in the peaks way off the trail by some ice-blue cirque lake. Cold mountain air. Pine trees. Campfire. Stars. Puffy sleeping bags and some marshmallows. And absolutely no one but you and me. Whatever we do, that’s the most important thing. I don’t want to see or hear another human being except you. If some Scout troop wanders by, I’ll kill them all.”
She squeezed him again and laughed, something wet sliding down his neck. Was she crying? “You okay?”
“Of course I’m okay. That was beautiful.” She wiped her eyes.
“Killing Boy Scouts is beautiful?” he said.
“You know what I mean. I love it—the tent by the lake, not the Boy Scout slaughter. That is 100 percent the plan. As soon as we can steal someone’s phone or tablet, we’re going to find the place, set a date, and do it.”