“Alpha Team assemble!” she barked. Twenty demons came forth, standing at attention before her. She had selected these twenty from her own retinue of demons, picking them for their quickness, agility, and intelligence. This was the hand that was going to pluck the apple from the garden while the gardener was distracted, so they had better be quick.
“Teams Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon assemble!”
The remaining demons sorted themselves into four groups of equal size. Each team would rally at a predetermined checkpoint and attack Eden II simultaneously from a different direction—north, south, east, and west. While the defenders were off-balance, Alpha Team would slip in from the southeast and head for the apple tree.
As the sun touched the tip of Mbutuokoti, Tiamat barked, “The time is at hand! Commence Operation Reclaim Paradise!”
The demons took flight, skimming low over the plain to avoid detection by the forces of Heaven. While teams Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon headed for their assigned checkpoints, Tiamat and her team took to the sky where they could observe the onslaught when it started.
Right on schedule, the teams assembled at the checkpoints. Team Delta, to the east of Eden II, was the last to assemble. Once it was in place, the four teams moved in unison toward the dome that was now glinting in the twilight. The blighted moon rose above the horizon.
By the time the sentries buzzing a few miles out from the dome knew what was happening, it was too late. The attack started with shoulder-fired missiles that tore gaping holes in the dome, massive chunks of concrete crumbling to the jungle floor below. The sentries managed to make nearly half the rockets detonate harmlessly in midair, but the dome was breached in a dozen places.
Angels poured out of the holes like angry wasps. At first they tried to create a repulsive barrier of energy around the dome, but this was a losing strategy. The attackers had expected this and easily neutralized the barrier, overwhelming the defenders with their sheer numbers. While half the attackers focused on dissolving the barrier, the other half hung in the air, picking off the defending angels with automatic rifles. The angels couldn’t be killed, of course, but they could be knocked out of the game for a while with a few well-aimed shots. A few of the defenders had guns but most of them wielded only flaming swords, and in any case were too busy trying to keep up their barrier to put up much of a man-to-man defense. The angels fell from the sky in droves.
Mere minutes after the battle started, Tiamat and her team plummeted from above, unnoticed in the chaos. A few angels tried to bar her way but they were taken down by the rifle-toting sharpshooters in Team Alpha. Tiamat and her score of demons descended through a hole in the dome, landing on the floor of the jungle below. She pulled out a portable GPS unit into which had been programmed the coordinates where Horace Finch had planted the apple seed.
“This way!” she barked, and they headed down a path through the jungle.
THIRTY-THREE
Eddie sat alone at a bus stop in Glendale a few blocks down from Charlie’s Grill, feeling sorry for himself. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him alone? He was supposed to be a disinterested observer, not a character in the story. Certainly not some cowardly quisling, which is how his character seemed doomed to be written.
Yes, he had left Christine and Jacob to be shanghaied by Izbazel and Gamaliel, but it wasn’t his job to play lookout. He had met his side of the bargain: their part of the story in exchange for Mercury’s location. In fact, he had given them more than he was obligated to, leading them right to Mercury. Besides, what difference would it have made if Eddie had warned them? If he had stuck around, he’d probably have been taken captive along with them. And then who would write the story?
Eddie was aware, on some level, that he was going a little insane. He could no longer have offered any rational explanation for why the story had to be written. It had become an obsession, a reason unto itself. The story was all that there was. But if that were true, then who was Eddie? Just another character in the story, and not a particularly heroic one at that.
No! thought Eddie. I’m not just a character. I’m writing the story. I’m the author! But if that were true, why couldn’t he get it to go where he wanted it to go? Why had he written himself as such a shiftless, craven twerp? Why couldn’t he at least be the hero of the story? Just once Eddie would like to say something totally badass, like “Go ahead, make my day,” “Yippie ki yay, motherfucker,” or “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.” Well, maybe not that last one.
Wormwood. It all came down to Wormwood. Cain and Cody had both told him so. And he could feel it. He could feel that Wormwood was going to bring about The End, with capital letters. There was no controlling it, no way around it. Whatever he did, whatever he wrote, the story came down to Wormwood. He couldn’t stop it. No one could. So why drag things out by helping out Christine and Jacob? He wasn’t doing them any favors by letting them run around for a little longer, trying to stuff troubles back into Pandora’s box.
But try as he might to think of himself as an amoral agent of inevitability, he still felt like shit about letting Christine down. Christine had a sort of naïve confidence that made you want to root for her. She reminded him of Cody. Again Eddie became painfully aware of his humanity asserting itself and his angelic nature slipping away.
What was it that Cody had said? “Pull the switch.” The phrase carried a sense of fatalism that was uncharacteristic of Cody. Pull the switch. Trigger Wormwood. End it all. What else could it possibly mean?
While he debated with himself, a very pregnant woman with thick, dark hair waddled up to the bench and took a seat next to him. She smiled shyly at Eddie and then looked away. She was young. Too young to be having a kid, thought Eddie. No ring on her finger. He wondered if she was all alone.
“Does this bus go to the mall?” she asked.
Eddie shrugged sheepishly, admitting that he had no idea where the bus was going.
She laughed. “Why are you here then?”
“Not sure,” said Eddie.
“That’s cool,” she said, smiling charitably at him. “Sometimes it’s good just to change things up a bit.”
Eddie was about to reply when he became aware that they were no longer alone at the bus stop: a young man was now standing before the woman. He wore a backward baseball cap, a baggy sweatshirt, and jeans that hung off his midthigh, exposing a good five inches of his underpants.
“Yo, Maria,” said the man. “Where’s my money?”
Maria clutched her purse. “It’s my money, Fernando. I need things for the baby.”
“We agreed, we split your tips,” said Fernando, regarding Eddie coldly. Eddie did his best to stare straight ahead. He didn’t need to get involved in any more petty drama. This was all going to be over with soon enough.
“I need the money,” pleaded Maria. “Please, Fernando. For the baby. For Ángel.”
“Listen, puta,” hissed Fernando. “Give me the money.”
“See here, now,” said Eddie, forgetting himself. “There’s no call for that sort of language. Clearly Maria needs to buy some things for your baby. Maybe you could—”
“Not my baby,” said Fernando. “I told her to get rid of it.”
“It is your baby,” insisted Maria.
“Regardless of whose baby it is,” said Eddie diplomatically, “wouldn’t you agree that—”
“Shit, man,” said Fernando, turning to Eddie. “What are you, her guardian angel?”
Eddie considered this for a moment, then stood up and looked Fernando in the eye. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I am. We’re stretched a little thin lately, as you can imagine, but I got a call that some pendejo was hassling Maria, so I came down to check it out.”
“That right, amigo?” said Fernando, pulling up his sweatshirt to reveal the handle of a revolver tucked into his waistband.
“Fernando,” said Eddie. “Please trust me on this. You do not want to do that.”
Fernando grinned and pulled t
he gun, pointing it at Eddie. Eddie grabbed Fernando’s wrist and pushed up, pointing the gun in the air. Fernando struggled, but Eddie—the least athletic of all the cherubim—was clearly stronger than he was. The more Fernando fought, the worse it went for him. Eddie’s arm was now completely straight, holding the gun pointed straight up in the air, inches away from Fernando’s right ear. And that’s when the gun went off.
Fernando screamed and fell to his knees, clutching his ear. The gun slipped out of his hands and into Eddie’s. Eddie carefully placed it next to Maria on the bench.
“Mi oído!” Fernando howled. “No puedo escuchar!”
“Calm down, you big baby,” said Eddie, putting his hand to the side of Fernando’s head.
“No! Leave me alone!”
“Will you move your hand?” Eddie said. “I’m going to fix your ear.”
After a moment, Fernando reluctantly released his grip, letting Eddie cup his ear in his hand. Fernando’s eyes lit up. “It’s better,” he gasped. “You fixed it!”
“Sí,” replied Eddie. “Better?”
Fernando nodded, rubbing his ear. “I still hear ringing, though.”
“Yeah, I left that as a reminder to you,” said Eddie. “If you can avoid being an asshole for the next couple of days, it should go away on its own. You think you can do that?”
“Sí,” said Fernando.
“Good. Now, Fernando, whose money is it?”
“Maria’s,” Fernando said sheepishly. “For the baby.”
“And whose gun is it?”
Fernando glanced at Maria, who was sitting with her hand on the revolver, a look of sheer amazement on her face.
“Maria’s gun,” he said.
“Damn straight,” said Eddie. “I’m not going to ask you whose baby it is. I’ll let you two work that out.” Eddie got to his feet. “I apologize for leaving so abruptly, but I have some important revisions to make to a report I’m working on. But Fernando, you’d better treat Maria with respect or I’ll come back. And next time, I won’t be as forgiving. Entiendes?”
Fernando nodded.
“Good,” said Eddie, picking up his bag and starting to walk away. After a moment, he stopped and turned. “Hey, Fernando,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“That ringing you hear?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s an angel getting his wings, amigo.”
THIRTY-FOUR
“Did I ever thank you guys for rescuing me that time?” Mercury asked. “You remember, that time I was tied up under that restaurant?”
“That was like an hour ago, Mercury,” said Christine humorlessly.
“Is that all? I guess time flies when you’re enjoying your freedom.”
“Shut up, Mercury. And you’re welcome.”
Christine, Mercury, and Jacob had been blindfolded, driven around for a while, and then brought inside some sort of building. It had a vaguely corporate smell, like coffee, cleaning products, and cubicles. They took an elevator several floors up and then were prodded into a room where they had been made to sit in chairs facing each other. Izbazel had tied them together for good measure and then the two demons had left the room.
“Shhh!” said Jacob. “I can hear them talking.”
Indeed, murmurs could be heard on the other side of the door.
Before Jacob could make any sense of what was being said or who was saying it, though, he heard the door opening, followed by footsteps. After a moment, their blindfolds were removed. The room was nondescript and windowless, illuminated only by fluorescent panels in the ceiling. Izbazel was standing in front of Jacob with a cruel look on his face. Gamaliel stood a few feet away, speaking softly into a cell phone and fiddling with something on a chair in the corner of the room. “Yep, he’s right here,” said Gamaliel. He stood up and walked to Jacob.
“Horace Finch has something to say to you,” said Gamaliel, holding the cell phone in front of Jacob’s face.
“Jacob Slater!” said Finch’s voice. “Let me say first of all how sorry I am that I can’t be there to see you and your friends killed. Terribly rude of me, considering that you took the time to come to Kenya in person and sabotage my multibillion-dollar particle collider. Unfortunately, I have business to attend to at the moment. Yes, you’ll be delighted to learn that despite your meddling, my plan to gain complete mastery over time and space is about to come to fruition. How do you like them apples?”
“You’re a lunatic, Finch,” said Jacob. “Get professional help. Unck.”
High-pitched laughter could be heard through the phone. “I’ll take your psychiatric diagnosis under advisement. Did you see the present I left for you?”
Gamaliel took a step to the side, revealing what he had been working on in the corner. Sitting on the chair was a fist-sized lump of putty. A timer stuck to the putty was counting down the seconds: 9:16...9:15...9:14...
“What?” Christine asked. “What is it?” From where she was seated, she couldn’t see the bomb.
“Half a kilogram of C4,” said Finch. “Enough to blow all three of you to kingdom come. You should thank me, really. It’s a completely painless way to die. I mean, except for the ten minutes of agony while you reflect on where you went wrong in life. After that, though, completely painless.”
“Screw you, Finch,” growled Christine.
“Clever,” said Finch. “You should be a writer. Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got some chrotons to catch. Enjoy your last minutes on Earth!”
Gamaliel put the phone to his ear. “Hey, Finch,” he said. “Can you put Tiamat back on? I wanted to ask her...” He trailed off uncertainly, and then said, “Um, all right then. In that case, I’ll call her back. Good talking to you.” He snapped the phone shut and slid it into his pocket.
“He hung up already, huh?” said Mercury.
“Shut up, Mercury!” Gamaliel growled, kicking Mercury in the shin. He turned to Izbazel. “Let’s go.”
The two demons stalked out, slamming the door behind them.
“Is there a timer?” Christine asked. “What does it say?”
“Eight minutes,” said Jacob.
“Eight minutes to live,” said Christine. “And I’m not even sure who is killing us or why.”
“I thought Finch was pretty clear on the phone just now,” said Mercury.
“Right, but I thought it was Lucifer who captured you. Then Izbazel and Gamaliel come to retrieve you, and I know that Izbazel works for Lucifer, but I thought that Gamaliel worked for Tiamat. And how the hell does Finch fit into any of this?”
“I think they’re all in it together,” said Mercury. “They’ve reached some kind of truce so they can attack Heaven on two fronts at once. Tiamat must be planning to take Eden II from the angels while Lucifer takes out the Eye. Finch is dreaming if he thinks Tiamat is doing this to help him and his buddies in the Order of the Pillars of Babylon, though. Once she’s got that apple stuffed full of tasty croutons, she’s not giving it up for anything.”
“Hang on,” said Christine. “What’s this ‘eye’ you’re talking about? Eddie said something about it too, but I didn’t really understand what he meant.”
“The Eye of Providence,” said Mercury. “You’ve seen it. It’s that big, pyramid-shaped thing that’s just down the street from the Apocalypse Bureau. It’s the source of all the interplanar energy, what angels use to cause miracles. It’s also what ultimately sustains the Universe, keeps it from falling apart. Lucifer wants to blow up the Eye to cripple Heaven and ultimately to bring about the destruction of the Universe.”
Jacob snorted. “You’re saying that there’s some magical pyramid that—unck—gives off mystical energy that holds the Universe together?”
“Well,” said Mercury. “I’d have said that it’s a mystical pyramid that—unck—gives off magical energy that holds the Universe together, but yes.”
Ignoring Mercury’s mockery, Jacob pressed him further. “Look, I’ll acknowledge that you...angel
s,” he said, somehow managing to convey air quotes despite the fact that his hands were tied, “have access to some pretty advanced technology. But don’t try to bullshit me with your mystical hocus-pocus. I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful force controlling everything.”
Mercury nodded. “It generally hides from scientists,” he said. “You see, what you call the ‘laws of physics’ are really just guidelines. It’s the interplanar energy that keeps those guidelines working. You don’t notice it because it’s always there, the way a fish doesn’t notice that he’s in water. Miracles are just a matter of tweaking the energy flow a bit to bend the laws of physics in a certain direction. Of course, miracles are very rare, especially when you’re specifically looking for them, so for all practical purposes the laws of physics are reliable. Except when they aren’t.”
“Sounds like nonsense to me,” said Jacob.
Mercury shrugged.
“So the Whore of Babylon and the devil himself are teaming up to kill us,” said Christine.
“Yep,” said Mercury. “The fact that Lucifer, Tiamat, and Horace Finch are all cooperating to kill you speaks quite highly of you. If there is an afterlife, make sure you mention that to the Man Upstairs.”
They sat in silence for a moment, reflecting on their situation.
“Could you defuse it, Jacob?” Christine asked. “I mean, if you could get to it?”
“Probably,” said Jacob. “And I could fly if I had wings. Unck. Hey, Mercury, can’t you, um, do one of your tricks or whatever?” asked Jacob.
“You mean miracles?” Mercury asked.
“Call it what you like,” said Jacob, trying to be patient. “Break the ropes and get us out of here.”
Mercury Rests Page 21