by Angela Henry
“No, I did not.” He was so blunt that it felt like a punch in the gut, and I instinctively pulled away from him.
The room and St. Peter were suddenly gone, and I was floating. The highway loomed below, and I felt the heavy pull of the earth pulling me down until SP grabbed my shirt. The room turned solid, and I was in the archive again.
“That was a close one. Don’t do that again.”
“Then how the hell did her name end up in my book?”
“I’m sure you can appreciate what an awkward position your predicament put me in. You pled guilty, and your last book disappeared from evidence. They’d placed you in isolation and wouldn’t let me see you. But I was able to pull some strings and get you a lighter sentence. I did the best I could for you, Xavier.”
“Getting my wings chopped off and being cast out was a lighter sentence?” Was he fucking kidding me?
“Seeing as how they wanted to execute you then, yes, you got a lighter sentence,” he replied dryly.
“Execute me? But this archive proves that I’m not the only guardian to ever lose a charge, right?”
“That would be correct.” He nodded.
“Then why was I the only one facing execution? What’s going on, SP?”
“I can’t answer that.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m as in the dark as you are, and as you know, I’m breaking the guardian code just by talking to you. I could be arrested myself for letting you in here. I’m sorry. But you’ll have to figure that out on your own.”
“And just how do you suggest I do that?” I asked. He touched my forehead, and an incredible warmth and calmness flooded my body and gave my skin a slight golden hue.
“I must go, but I’ve gifted you with a bit of my grace. It will allow you to remain here for a short while, fifteen minutes, twenty at the most. Use this time wisely.” He backed away toward the wall. “And guard well what you find here,” he warned.
The door in the wall appeared once again, and when he opened it, I could see his office was on the other side and not the storage rooms, meaning there must be multiple access points to this room. Once he’d gone, I looked around. It was a simple room, with white walls and a plain hardwood floor the size of a large walk-in closet. But I noticed there weren’t just one arched archive entrance but two. That’s when I remembered that SP had said something about access to the restricted archives being forbidden for all guardians. He’d said archives, as in more than one forbidden archive.
The door to my right looked like someone’s front door. It was black and had a narrow silver plaque mounted on it with the words Archive of Unintentional Loss engraved in large block lettering. The door to my left looked like ancient, rich-brown mahogany, with the tree of knowledge carved into its center sitting in the middle of a fork between two roads. But I couldn’t find the name of this archive anywhere on or around the door. Realizing my time was running out, I opened the door of the Archive of Unintentional Loss and stepped inside a darkened movie theater, complete with folding seats, a large movie screen mounted on the wall, and a faint smell of popcorn. A freckle-faced young man dressed in an usher’s uniform and carrying a flashlight walked forward and greeted me.
“Good afternoon, sir. Right this way.”
The theater was divided into three sections. I followed him down the empty theater’s right aisle. He showed me to a seat in the center section, the third row back from the front.
“Thanks.” I sat down in a comfortable leather seat.
“Now, just tell me whose life balance you’re here to view, and I’ll get it for you.”
“Mona Dial,” I said and watched as he hurried up the aisle and disappeared behind a red curtain.
Leticia Moody told me that looking into Mona Dial’s life would give me the answers to why I’d been framed. But would it also tell me who had framed me? Alexi hated my guts. He’d been the one to turn me in. But could he have also been the one to alter my book? And if so, how had he pulled it off? The young man was back and handed me a small, clear, round disc that resembled a DVD but was the size of a half dollar.
“Uh, what am I supposed to do with this?”
“Put it in the slot in the armrest and push play. Happy viewing.”
I watched him disappear behind the curtain again before I inserted the disc into the slot and pushed play. Instantly, words popped up on the screen that read: “The Life Unlived of Mona Elizabeth Dial” and then her dates of birth and death. Above the words was a black and white picture of a smiling Mona Dial. It looked like a high school yearbook picture, showing her with braces, thick glasses, and big, teased hair that must have taken a can of hair spray to hold it in place. There was no narration or music, just moving images and subtitles, like an old newsreel from the turn of the century. After the words “Had She Lived” flashed up on the screen was an image of Mona in a cap and gown, graduating from medical school, followed by her in a strapless wedding gown with her hair pulled back, walking down the aisle with her father and then kissing her new husband, Oliver. Next came three children, two boys: Dillon and Hunter, and a girl, Caitlin. The next images were of Mona and her teenage children at the grave site of her husband, Oliver, who’d died of cancer, and subsequently at the graves of each of her parents. In between all the family stuff were newspaper and magazine clippings chronicling Dr. Mona Dial’s professional accomplishments, which were all in scientific lingo that I couldn’t understand, that is, until a new image appeared on the screen, a picture of Mona’s daughter, Caitlin, aged twenty-five.
At least that’s who the subtitles identified her as. But I barely recognized her as the pretty fresh-faced teen posing with her mother at an awards ceremony. She was skin and bones, with sores on her face and patches of hair missing, being tied to a hospital bed by restraints as she raged and tried to bite a nurse. I leaned forward in my seat. I’d seen this before. Caitlin was a NeCro addict. The next images were of Mona giving her daughter regular injections, followed by time-lapse images of Caitlin getting better, gaining weight, regrowing hair, and finally a completely healthy Caitlin hugging her mother as they smiled from the cover of Time magazine under the headline: Dr. Mona Dial: Savior. She’d created a drug that reversed the effects of NeCro.
The pages of the Time article also showed chilling future images of domed cities all around the world and the areas outside the domes wastelands inhabited by NeCro-addicted zombies. A year later, hundreds of thousands of NeCro addicts had been cured, and Dr. Dial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for medicine. I fell back in my seat. So this was what it was all about. Mona Dial. Whoever was behind the creation of NeCro didn’t want a cure to be found. The disc ended with an obit for Mona Dial, who would have lived until the ripe old age of ninety-seven. The young man appeared next to my seat with his hand held out, and it took me a second to realize he wanted the disc back. I pushed eject and handed it to him.
“Do you have any questions?” He smiled. I could tell it was a genuine smile, but it still creeped me out.
“Yeah, who else has looked at this disc?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t give you that information,” he said, still smiling warmly.
“Why not?”
“A theater patron’s viewing record is confidential,” he replied, still smiling.
“Can you at least tell me how many times it’s been viewed?”
“Certainly, sir. Including your viewing, this particular disc has been viewed three times.”
“By me and two other people, or once by me and twice by another person?”
“I’m sorry, but the statistics on this disc only show me how many times it’s been viewed, not by how many people.”
I was getting nowhere with this guy and only had about ten minutes left before SP’s grace would wear off when another thought occurred to me.
“Hey, do you have any new discs that just came in the last hour or so?”
I was thinking about the woman I’d seen Alexi let die by the side of the road. He had to be in this mess up t
o his wings, and I needed to know if that poor woman had anything to do with Mona Dial’s future cure for NeCro. But the young man just shook his head.
“Any discs that have come in the last hour have to be processed and won’t be available until . . .”
“Okay.” I cut him off and got up to go. “I get it. Thanks for all your help.”
“My pleasure, and thank you for visiting the Archive of Unintentional Loss. Please come again.” He escorted me to the door, and I was barely out of it before he closed it behind me.
SP said I’d have about fifteen to twenty minutes, and that had been twelve minutes ago. I was waiting for my time to be up when the door to the other, nameless archive creaked open a crack. I expected someone to come out. But no one did. So I walked over to the door and opened it.
“Hello?” I said into the dark void on the other side. Lights suddenly came on, revealing a long narrow hallway lit by a row of colored paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. A woman popped up in front of me from out of nowhere.
“Hello, and welcome to the Archive of Alternate Existence.” The woman bowed.
She was a beautiful Japanese woman in a traditional silk kimono decorated with cherry blossoms. Her long black hair was pulled back with a ribbon. She wore white socks instead of shoes. Very conscious of the fact that my too-small uniform strained at the buttons, I bowed as much as my tight clothes would allow before it hit me what she’d just said.
“An Archive for Alternate Existence?”
“That is correct. Have you come to view an alternate existence?” She looked a bit confused.
“Yes.”
“Then please remove your shoes and follow me.”
I did as she told me, and soon we were headed down the narrow hallway, which opened up onto a tearoom that looked out onto a Japanese ornamental garden, with a large round stone pond filled with koi. A low square table surrounded by silk cushions filled the center of the room. On either side of the room, the walls were lined with shelves full of small hand-painted teapots the size of my fist. Next to each pot sat a single small matching cup without a handle. She gestured for me to sit down, and I sat on a cushion.
“I’ve never been here before. Can you please explain the purpose of this archive and how it works?”
“It is as the name suggests. All souls have two existences: the one they are currently living and the one that could have been. This archive houses a soul’s alternate existence. In other words, the life they are not living is stored here. Each teapot holds the alternate existence of each soul. Pouring from the pot into the cup will reveal that alternate existence,” she explained with the utmost patience. I just stared at her. Did I just hear her right? All souls have two existences?
“Why would a soul need two existences?”
“I’m sorry, but I do not have that answer. I am just the keeper of this archive. My role is not to question, but to serve.” She bowed again. Damn, she sounded just like I used to.
I’d just been a worker bee, too. I did what they told me and saved whoever popped up in my book without question. I never asked why I’d been given a murderer as a charge and not his victim, because I knew it had to be part of a bigger plan, even though I never knew what that plan was. And never asked. That information was above my pay grade. And because I’d never asked any questions, a woman who’d been destined to save the people of the world from becoming either living zombies or zombie chow had died, I got clipped, and Ava Duval was . . . Desiree West?
“I need to see the alternate existence of Ava Duval.” I only had about two minutes left.
She nodded and went to one of the teapot-lined shelves and slid it open, revealing a hallway lined with more shelves that seemed to stretch to infinity, and disappeared inside. Seconds later, she emerged carrying a black tray. On the tray was written the name Ava Duval and her birth date in swirling purple calligraphy. But no teapot sat on the tray, just the matching cup. She set the tray in front of me.
“Where’s the teapot?” But I already knew the answer. My stomach knotted involuntarily. The woman looked from the tray to me with a very troubled expression.
“I am so sorry, but it appears that Ava Duval is already living her alternate existence.” She lowered her head in shame, like it was her fault.
What had I been expecting her to bring me when I already knew the woman I loved existed as someone else now? Thinking her gone forever had been bad enough, but being told beyond a shadow of a doubt was unbearable.
I stared at the tray and traced Ava’s name with my finger. Then I noticed her date of birth: June 5, 1982, the same date as Mona Dial. They were born on the same day. I’d saved Ava instead of Mona. Now Mona was dead, and Ava was no longer Ava. She was living her alternate existence as Desiree West. Leticia had said that my saving Ava had dictated that Mona die in her place because of their shared birthday and because the laws of fate demanded a life in exchange. But once that happened, it should have been an even exchange.
“How is it possible for a soul to switch existences?”
“It is impossible for a soul to switch existences without express approval.”
Whoever framed me and added Ava’s name to my book in place of Mona’s had chosen the perfect way to kill Mona. But that shouldn’t have caused Ava to become Desiree West. She should still be Ava Duval.
“Express approval from whom?”
She started to speak, but I couldn’t hear what she said because she faded away. And suddenly I was sitting on the ground by the side of the highway in the same spot I’d been in when I took Alexi’s key. Apparently St. Peter’s grace made for a much quicker and smoother journey than being chucked out of the gates on my ass. But I still wore Marius’s uniform; the cuffs of the shirt were now at my elbows, and the pants were three inches above my ankles. A fluttering noise made me look up, and my clothes and shoes drifted down from the sky and into my lap. Good old Marius. I ducked behind the nearest bush to change.
NINETEEN
When I got back to the Range Rover, it was empty and parked on the side of the road. I didn’t see the kid anywhere, and I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. Traffic had started moving again slowly, and there was smoke in the air several miles ahead, but I couldn’t see where it came from. I had gotten behind the wheel and started the car when two people emerged from the bushes that grew alongside the highway: the kid, closely followed by the lovely Desiree West, formerly Ava Duval, and aka the last person on earth I wanted to see right now. She had a firm hand on Granger’s shoulder as he zipped his pants. He broke into a run when he saw me. Agent West just looked annoyed and trotted after him like he was an unruly toddler.
“Hey! Xavier! Wait up!”
“Do I even want to know what you two were doing in the bushes?” I asked when they reached me. I looked directly at West, who wouldn’t look me in the eye. She blushed and seemed embarrassed. What was that about?
“Mr. Granger had to take a leak, and I wasn’t taking any chances on him doing another vanishing act. And you had about five more minutes to get back here, Mr. Knight, or I was going to have your vehicle impounded and would be escorting Mr. Granger back to EA headquarters.”
“See, I told you he’d come back,” Granger said to West. “Man, what took you so long? You were gone for an hour. Did you hear the explosion?”
“I had business to take care of, and what explosion?” I looked from West to Granger, waiting for one of them to explain.
“The explosion at Necropolis Pharmaceuticals. Someone drove a car rigged with enough dynamite to level a stadium into the lobby,” she said.
“A woman?” I asked. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, and I had my answer. “Shit,” I said softly.
“Crystal Sneed. Did you have any idea what she was planning?”
“Are you kidding? I knew she was desperate, but I had no idea she’d do something like this. She told me she didn’t know who was behind NeCro, and if I hadn’t been an unwilling guest of the Equinox Agency last ni
ght, I might have been able to track her down.”
“And you should have known better than to believe an addict,” she snarled. “Lying becomes second nature to them. You should have followed her!”
“I should have followed her?” I got out of the car, but she stood her ground and glared up at me unflinchingly, which somehow made me want her even more. “And what about the almighty EA? Why didn’t you guys know about NeCro? You have no idea what this shit is going to do to the population once it gets out!”
“I know a winged motherfucker hired an unlicensed necromancer and his chemist brother to create a supernatural drug to wipe out the human population. I know I don’t have time to stand by the side of the road arguing with an arrogant asshole about how I do my job. I know—”
“Did you say winged?” Was she talking about Alexi?
“Yes, I said winged,” she replied, calming down a little. “Dr. Langdon Grace, the head of Necropolis Pharmaceuticals. Do you know him?”
“We saw his name on their website when we were looking for info on the real Vic Buchard,” said Granger.
“What color were his wings?” I hoped with everything in me she’d say any other color but . . .
“Black,” she replied. “He had black wings—why?”
I sighed and leaned against the car.
“And he’s not a bird shifter?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not a shifter, but I can’t be one hundred percent—why? What are thinking?”
“Nephilim,” I replied.
Desi looked stunned.
“Holy crap! Are you serious?” said Granger.
“Positive. Black wings and a hatred of mankind. Yep, I’d say Dr. Langdon Grace is most likely a Nephilim.”
Nephilim were the offspring of angels and humans and didn’t belong on earth but weren’t welcome in heaven. They were the redheaded stepchildren of all creation. They desperately craved God’s love and attention with the same ferocity that they hated and were jealous of God’s creation, man, and tended to make alliances with every nonhuman who shared in that hatred, which were quite a few of them. It’s also why they could usually be found doing business with demons. Nephilim believed that since they weren’t welcome in heaven, then they should be the rulers of earth. They were pretty arrogant bastards and an absolute pain in the ass to deal with.