by S. J. West
“That’s laughable,” Helena scoffs. “A drunkard like you bringing me in. How exactly do you intend to do that?”
“Oh, I didn’t say I would be the one to bring you in, just cash in on the bounty.”
“Same question: How do you intend to work that miracle?”
“I wouldn’t be much of a bounty hunter if I told you all of my trade secrets.”
Helena winces again, but this time her breathing pattern changes and she acts like she can’t take in a deep breath. I stand from my seat and hold onto the railing as I make my way down the four steps to her. She’s bent over slightly at the waist as she tries to compose herself.
“Do you need a doctor?” I ask her, lightly cupping her bent elbow with one hand to help steady her.
Helena shakes her head vigorously. “No. I don’t need a doctor.”
“Have you even been to a doctor since you found out you were pregnant?”
“No,” she says with finality, as if it’s a closed subject.
“If this is an abnormal pain, you need to go see a doctor,” I advise her.
“Nothing about this pregnancy has been natural,” she assures me. “I don’t need a doctor to tell me something I already know.”
It only takes me a second to figure out why Helena is refusing medical attention.
“Are you scared of what they’ll tell you about the baby?” I ask her. “I overheard some of the War Angels placing bets on whether it will come out looking human or like something else.”
“And I will make them regret placing wagers on my child’s well-being,” Helena says vehemently between labored breaths.
“I don’t think they meant any disrespect to the baby,” I reply, “just to you.”
“I could care less what those half-wits think about me,” Helena declares. “And you can tell them that they’re fools if they believe I’ll willingly hand over my son to them.”
“How do you know it’s a boy?” I ask in surprise. “I thought you said you hadn’t been to a doctor yet. Did you do a ultrasound on yourself or something to find out?”
“I don’t need to look at him,” she tells me, wrenching her elbow out of my grasp. “I just know.”
Helena phases to points unknown by me, because I’m not an angel, but I do know a couple who can follow the phase trail she left behind. As quickly as my alcohol-numbed legs will take me, I head back into the cabin’s interior. As soon as I step inside through the backdoor, I wave at the camera stationed on the opposite wall, knowing the guard on duty ordered to keep watch will see me and get word to either Uncle Enis or my mother that the prodigal daughter has returned.
I lean against the door opening to wait for someone to show up. Less than a minute passes before the dynamic duo make their appearance.
Of course my mother shows up impeccably dressed. She’s wearing a well-tailored white pantsuit that would look silly on any other woman her age. Her long blonde hair is styled loosely in waves that cascade past her shoulders. The look of disapproval on her face is the only thing marring her beauty.
“Oh, Jules,” my mother says disappointedly as she takes in my drunken state, “when will you stop torturing yourself like this?”
“No time soon,” I answer, because it’s the truth. I’m not in the mood to discuss my lack of virtues with my mother yet again, so I quickly change the subject. “Helena was just here.”
“Where?” Uncle Enis is quick to ask, taking a step forward as he readies himself to go where I direct.
Sweet, loyal Uncle Enis. If he wasn’t my “uncle,” I could have easily fallen in love with him. Sure, he is handsome with his chiseled looks and curly brown hair, but it is his soul I love. It’s almost impossible for me to believe he used to work with Lucifer when that particular devil was earthbound. In fact, he and mom only recently left Lucifer’s employ, as it were. After Lucifer returned to Heaven, he left the rest of the rebellion angels to fend for themselves. From what I understand, that certainly caused a ruckus among the angels he left behind. Most of them felt abandoned and decided to try and make Lucifer’s daughter, Anna (the empress of the cloud city of Cirrus on Earth), pay for his rejection of them. My mom said God pretty much put the kibosh on the rebellion angels’ plans for revenge, and the leader of the rebels, Hale, is still trying to figure out a way to exact his vengeance on Anna. I don’t see that happening anytime soon, though. He lost over half his supporters after God’s interference. I figure he’s going to need some time to lick his wounds and reorganize before he tries anything else.
“She was out back at the foot of the steps,” I tell him.
He immediately phases. I turn around to look back outside and ask him, “Can you still see her phase trail?”
“Yes,” he answers, but I notice he doesn’t phase to wherever Helena has scampered off to.
My mother walks up behind me to peer out into the backyard over my shoulder.
“She’s in Hell,” my mother informs me, obviously being able to see Helena’s phase trail from where she stands. “She must have known you would contact us and went to the one place she knew we couldn’t follow her to.”
“And why is that exactly?” I ask. “You used to go back and forth to that place all the time. Why can’t you go there now?”
“Hell is Helena’s domain. If she wants to be left alone, that’s where she goes because she can block anyone else from entering. I’ve told you this before, Jules. More than once in fact.”
The condescension in my mother’s voice grates on my nerves. I don’t know why she expects me to remember every little detail about angels. It’s hard enough these days for me to remember how to walk in a straight line, much less keep up with her kind’s peculiarities.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, feeling the full effects of the alcohol in my body kick in as my eyelids become too heavy to keep open any longer. “She’ll have to come up for air eventually, and when she does, I’ll be able to find her.”
“Tough talk coming from a drunkard,” my mother replies, but not unkindly. Her voice is simply filled with the usual disdain for my current state. I feel her place her hands on my arms and pull my body back against her, because she knows I’ll be passing out soon and will most likely end up flat on my face if left unattended. There’s only so many times you can break your nose without it making your face look odd. “How exactly do you plan to work such a miracle, Jules?”
My mom might be a thorn in my side most of the time, but she’s one of the few people in my life I know I can count on and trust.
“I put a tracer on her,” I say right before sleep has a chance to claim my conscious mind, providing me a small respite from the real world. “You better get in touch with those War Angels and let them know so they can be ready to pony up the dough they’ll owe me when I find her.”
“Good girl,” I hear my mom whisper in my ear as she accepts my full weight against her.
I know she’ll take care of me. She’s done it more times over the last five years than I care to think about. One day, I hope I can break away from my self-indulgent pity fest, but today isn’t that day. No amount of alcohol can make me forget what I came home to on this night five years ago, and I fear it might take an act of God to change the path of self-destruction I’m heading down now. Miracles might happen on Earth on a regular basis, but in my world, they’ve been few and far between.
CHAPTER 2
“I say we wake her up and find out what she knows.”
“Evelyn said Jules was pretty drunk when she found her. For all we know, she might have just hallucinated seeing Helena at the cabin.”
“I may have been drunk,” I say to the men talking about me, still keeping my eyes closed as I continue to wake up, “but I didn’t hallucinate her, Roan.”
Cautiously, I open one eye to check where it is my mother laid me this time to sleep off my drunken stupor. I quickly close it again because bright sunshine is not what my already aching head needs at the moment.
“Can on
e of you close the curtains in here, please?” I request as I begin to rub the ache out of my temples with the tips of my fingers. “I can’t think straight when my head hurts like this.”
“Close the curtains for her,” I hear Roan say to his companion. “I’ll be right back.”
I know there are four windows in my mother’s living room, so I wait until I hear the man who stayed behind slide the curtains across all four rods before cautiously opening my eyes again. I slowly sit up on the white suede couch I’m on and find a cup of piping hot black coffee sitting on the glass and steel table in front of me. I reach out and grab the white porcelain mug, bringing it to my lips and taking a sip of the nectar for faster sobriety.
I hear the man who closed the curtains walk around the couch as he comes to stand across the coffee table from me. I take another sip of the hazelnut flavored coffee before looking up into his disapproving face.
“Gideon, isn’t it?” I ask the War Angel. How do I know he’s one of the War Angels from Earth? He’s wearing one of their signature black leather uniforms with the “WA” insignia embroidered over his heart on the jacket. He’s handsome in a rugged sort of way with his high forehead and sharp cheekbones. He has dark brown hair that he wears parted to the side, and the muscles beneath his jacket are so large they make the leather of his uniform ripple when he moves.
“Yes,” he replies, crossing his arms over his chest in a defensive stance without saying anything else.
I’ve met a few of Empress Anna Devereaux’s War Angel contingent, but the only one who comes to see my mother on a regular basis is Roan. From what I’ve been told, he’s the War Angels’ second in command. An angel by the name of Ethan Knight is first in command, but I’ve never met him. I guess our insignificant planet of Sierra isn’t high on his list of priorities. He and his men have been searching for Helena for months now. I’m just not sure why she’s been letting them.
“Helena knows you’re using the Nexus in Hell to search for her,” I inform him.
“We figured as much,” Gideon says, not looking at all surprised by my announcement. “I don’t suppose she told you why she’s been letting us use it.”
“I only talked to her for a few minutes. We didn’t exactly become besties within that amount of time. I’m good at making people tell me things they wouldn’t normally tell others, but even I need more time than that to trick the embodiment of Hell into spilling all of her secrets to me.”
Gideon chortles at my remark. “Good luck getting her to tell you much, if you ever even see her again.”
“Oh, I’ll see her again,” I say confidently. “It’s only a matter of time before she comes back to this planet.”
Gideon looks confused. “Why are you so sure she’ll come back?”
“She’s been back to the cabin at least twice that we know of, right? Her memories of Cade are drawing her back there. She can’t help herself from going to the one place she was happy. She might be the most evil creature in the universe, but she felt the joy love can bring. It’s something she’ll always yearn to experience again, even if it’s only through a distant memory.”
Roan phases back into the room. He immediately walks over to me, raising his right hand, which has a small silver rod in it.
When he raises his hand to my forehead, I pull back slightly and ask, “What the hell is that thing, and what are you planning to do with it?”
“You said you can’t think straight when your head is hurting. This,” he says, holding out the silver rod in his hand, “will take the pain away if you’ll let me use it on you. It’s a healing wand they use back on Earth.”
“Healing wand?” I ask, eyeing the device warily. “Sounds a little too good to be true.”
“It’s technology well beyond what your planet has at the moment. You’re a few centuries away from figuring out how to make something this sophisticated.”
“I guess you can use it on me,” I say hesitantly. Although it’s always been my practice to run away from people who offer miracles, I know I can trust Roan.
My mother has already told me that Sierra’s technology is primitive compared to what Earth has. Although from what she said, Earth had a war to end all wars about five hundred years ago. Apparently the people with the most wealth built cloud cities to live in while the people left on the surface ended up almost destroying each other. Once the war was over, those in the cloud cities basically enslaved the survivors and posted people they called “overlords” to watch over their productivity. My mom said Empress Anna is trying to change the way cloud cities treat those who live within their territories and that she’s having great success now that Helena is otherwise occupied with the arrival of her first child. Right now, there are only two cloud cities still trying to maintain absolute control over their down-worlders: Nimbo and Virga. The only reason those cities are still trying to keep the down-worlders in their place is because each of them is still being ruled by a prince of Hell.
A prince named Levi stole the body of Nimbo’s emperor, Zuri Solarin, on Helena’s orders. She was then presented to the world as Zuri’s new wife, granting her the title of empress. From what I understand, she publicly argued against Anna’s desire to help the down-worlders gain cloud city technology to make their lives easier, and she was also instrumental in nearly costing Anna her position as empress. However, almost all of Anna’s problems were resolved with a favorable outcome with help from an unexpected source: Helena. Once she discovered she could love someone else besides herself, Helena decided to end her campaign to ruin Anna and rode off with Cade into the happily-ever-after sunset. Unfortunately, Helena’s plans fell through a crack she didn’t see coming. In an ironic twist of fate and startling tragedy, it was the strength of Helena’s love for Cade that ultimately ended his life on Earth, forever damning Helena to live an eternity without him by her side.
After Roan waves the healing wand across my forehead, the ache inside my skull quickly dissipates, leaving my mind clearer than it has been in ages.
“I don’t suppose you would be willing to let me buy that thing off of you,” I say to Roan as he takes a step back from me, tucking the healing wand into one of his back pockets.
“Sorry,” he says with a smile. “That would be against the rules of accelerating a world’s technology before its time. Now that you can think straight, can you tell us exactly what happened last night between you and Helena?”
I go on to tell the men what was said—at least what I can remember of the conversation anyway. I don’t mention that I might be forgetting a few details. I honestly don’t know if I am or not. The whole night is a little on the fuzzy side, but I’m pretty sure most of what I’m saying is true.
“Enis said her phase trail led straight to Hell,” Gideon says after my retelling of the previous night’s events. “Did she happen to mention where she’s been hiding out all this time? A planet name or even a solar system?”
I shake my head, finding it strange not to feel any pain associated with the action. I can’t even remember the last time I was able to do it without getting a little dizzy afterwards.
“She didn’t tell me where she’s been or what she’s been doing,” I tell them, seeing the immediate disappointment on both of their faces. You would have thought I just kicked their favorite dog or something considering their expressions. “But I assume my mom told you that I was able to put a tracer on Helena.”
“How did you get away with that anyway?” Gideon asks, sounding skeptical that I could pull something like that off without getting caught in the act.
“I was lucky enough to have an unexpected distraction help me out. The baby started kicking and she doubled over in pain,” I say. “When I went to help her, I grabbed her arm by the elbow and was able to leave a skin-colored tracer there.”
“And she didn’t feel you do that?” Roan asks cynically.
“It’s the size of a freckle,” I explain. “No one ever feels it, and it doesn’t wash off. It has to be scr
aped off. So unless she has itchy elbows, odds are she won’t find it.”
“But she has to come back to this planet before you can track her, correct?” Roan asks.
“Yes. Sorry, but I don’t think there’s a tracker on this planet that can comb the known universe.”
Roan considers this for a moment. “What if you were on a different planet? Would you be able to still track her if she was on it too?”
“I should be able to,” I say hesitantly. “What are you going to do? Phase me to every known world in the universe?”
I meant it as a joke, but from the serious way both Roan and Gideon are looking at me now, I can tell my witty suggestion is exactly what they want to do.
“Would you be willing to do that?” Roan asks.
A large golden dollar sign suddenly flashes in my mind.
“For a price,” I reply, trying to keep my tone cool. I don’t want to act too eager. The more of a hassle I make this little adventure of theirs sound, the more money they should be willing to give me for my time. “I’ll do it, but you may not want to pay my fee.”
“And exactly how much is your time worth?” Roan questions cautiously.
“I want half of what you’re offering for her capture, whether we find her or not. If we do find her, then you can give me the rest of the bounty.”
“Are you insane?” Gideon thunders angrily. “You want fifty gold bars just for a maybe?”
Calmly, I place the coffee cup back on the table, raise my legs, and rest my feet on it as I lounge back on the couch with my arms crossed over my chest.
“You got a better lead on Helena available?” I ask them, knowing if they did, they wouldn’t be standing in front of me now. “You should also know that Helena told me she thought the baby was going to be born soon. So the longer you wait, the closer she gets to popping out the miracle child. From what I saw, she seems awfully attached to the little tike already, and it’s not even born yet. My mom said you were afraid she might love it to death like she did Cade. If that’s the case, I’m not sure why you’re wasting time haggling about this with me. We could be out searching for her now instead of talking about it.”