by Ted Minkinow
And she had. I could forgive Soyla and Sparky. I expected as much out of them. They couldn’t help doing what they did because of who they were. And they never tried to make me believe otherwise. I never expected any dealing with No Face or his demons to go my way, and there was brutal honesty in that. Val and Prince One Way? I harbored no ill will toward them. They’d paid the tab on what they owed me. Accounts closed. But an angel? My guardian freakin’ angel?
If I’d given the concept of a guardian angel any thought at all—and I couldn’t remember doing it before this mess started—I would have thought no way.
“I did not,” Sarah Arias said, and I could see a desperate, heartbroken look on her face.
“Nice try sister,” I said. “You’re no different from Mestephos.”
I thought she’d cry. Didn’t I hear somewhere about no tears in heaven? Tears wouldn’t move me though, and I strained to hold off the impulse as I felt my teeth extend. And I piled it on.
“I take that back,” I said. “You are different from a demon.”
I saw hope on her face.
“Mestephos never claimed to be on my side,” I said. “All he wanted out of me was a meal. And he made it clear.”
Tears began. They glistened like diamonds and disappeared in flight before they reached the floor. So what. Let them flow. Would they be there if I’d taken that purple bag into the demon dimension and never returned? I doubted it. She wasn’t crying for me. Not at all. Those tears were all about getting caught.
“You’re wrong,” Sarah Arias said.
“About what?” I said. “Am I wrong about you wanting that purple bag as much as anyone else who drove me to doing the things I did? The risks I took?”
A couple of American soldiers in civilian clothes slowed up to take another look as they passed. I noticed a few more people staring at Sarah Arias and me from the Duty Free Store. I lowered my voice.
“Or am I wrong about twenty people who died in hell last night,” I said.
That would be in addition to the two lives I ended to satisfy my own demon, but I wasn’t in the mood to beat myself up.
Sarah Arias pulled a lacy handkerchief from somewhere and began dabbing at her eyes. I noticed her makeup didn’t smear. She still looked perfect. Was she even wearing makeup?
“Come with me,” she said. “And I’ll explain.”
I thought about that for a second.
“Come where?” I said. “To the departure lounge?”
She shook her head.
“Israel,” she said.
“Just like that?” I said. “Israel. Drop everything and fly off to Israel with someone who tried to get me killed.”
Now I saw the hint of a smile on her face.
“If you weren’t already prepared to do that,” she said. “What are you doing here now?”
Crap. Checkmate.
“We’re going to sit down in that bar,” I pointed at the restaurant a few shops down the wide hall, “and you’re going to convince me I’m wrong about what you’ve done to me.”
“We’ll miss the flight,” she said.
So be it. We could miss that flight and every other departure. I didn’t care. She could go by herself. Leave me behind. I didn’t know why she needed me anyway. Pulling at that thread a little more, I didn’t know why an angel would need me to steal the purple bag in the first place. It kind of made sense there’d be rules against demons walking into a cathedral and desecrating a grave, and I kind of understood why Sparky and Soyla nudged me down the yellow brick road in order to keep the risk away from themselves. But an angel?
You’d think they’d be granted free access to holy locations. Was it possible Sarah Arias was just cleaning up my mess? I wasn’t sure, and my anger didn’t want to give in just yet.
“We’ll miss the flight,” she repeated, and this time I heard urgency in her voice.
“I’m not going,” I said.
I could see the gears moving in her mind, or maybe I imagined it. More likely she was scanning my brain and picking up the uncertainty.
“I’ll pretend to be your wife on the flight,” she said.
“Departure in twenty minutes,” I said, “Stop gabbing and let’s get moving.”
And we did.
Chapter 40
Two aspects of our preflight are worth mentioning. First, Sarah Arias breezed through the security checkpoint outside the departure lounge. They have those at the Frankfurt airport. Nobody but me seemed to notice the security folks didn’t even make her place the purple bag on the belt leading through the X-Ray machine. She just walked through the metal detector with no sweat at all.
Me? Not so much. I half expected the security clown to kiss me and promise to call later. The guy checked so many places on my body that I considered asking him to send the results of the proctoscopy exam.
“Mind if I go through the line again?” I said after he handed my bag and changed rubber gloves.
The guy shook his head and pointed at the lounge. No humor at all
The second notable thing about our flight? Sarah Arias booked first class. Nothing but the best for our ladies in white. The cabin had those wide, leather seats that reclined all the way flat. They were situated by twos and in such a way to provide maximum privacy. Sarah Arias began fiddling with her entertainment system and I ordered a free champagne.
The flight attendant offered one of those smiles the folks back in the cattle section never get to see and walked away to fulfill my request. Sarah Arias leaned over and said,
“Are you sure you should start drinking so soon?”
Who was the idiot that agreed she could act like my wife?
“It’s OK dear,” I said. “Some of my clearest thoughts come when I’m pasted.” And then a bit louder, “You remember, I was drunk the night you took me to that chapel in Vegas.”
I drank my champagne and ordered a beer after takeoff. I didn’t really want the drinks but I needed to send a clear message about not letting marriage impact my individuality. How stupid was that? I mean, Sarah Arias and I weren’t married at all. She’d made a suggestion to make me forget my anger and here I was already planning on how to sneak out on poker night.
“What movie are you going to watch?” she said.
What was she talking about? I glanced around and saw that everyone else had switched to the movie page on their entertainment system.
“Pick one,” I said.
She did—some chick flick—and she counted to three. We both hit start and the same time and put on our headsets. Great. Now I’d get to spend the next two hours watching schmuck husband dying of an awful disease and new boyfriend laboring to help the widow forget. I glanced over at Sarah Arias. She was watching like she’d never seen a movie in her life.
She caught me looking and she smiled. She also rearranged things so that her head ended up on my chest and her hand held mine as we both watched the movie from the little screen in front of me. I declined the next beer the flight attendant brought and didn’t think about ordering another the rest of the flight. Why would I do anything to interrupt the peace I felt as Sarah Arias and I cycled through one movie after another until they turned off the system for landing. This marriage thing could grow on a guy.
A car, one of those fancy, off road sport utility vehicles, and driver were waiting for us.
“Want to freshen up at the hotel first?”
“Pig,” Sarah Arias said. This time though, she snickered.
Sarah Arias and I were pals now. More than that, I thought. But how could I tell what I really thought about her through all that angel radiation of hers?
“You married my piggyness when you married me,” I said.
I thought that would bring even more laughter out of her. Wrong. She put her hand over her mouth and looked at me through wide, innocent eyes.
“Did I marry you?” she said.
Did she what? Was this chick serious? My turn to look at her in shock. And that got the big Ho-Ho out
of her that I missed with my own little joke.
“Had you, didn’t I,” she said.
“Yeah, you had me all right.”
And she did. My mood shifted from frantic when I thought maybe I really did marry her to a sad disappointment when she sprung the joke. I thought I did a good job of hiding it by laughing with her.
But I don’t think I fooled Sarah Arias. I felt her hand reach for mine and our fingers intertwined. I looked into her eyes and saw a smile concealing an otherwise sad look.
“It is forbidden, vampire,” she said.
Not the same as “it’s not going to happen.” That was the line Sister Christian used. It’s not going to happen she had said. Sarah Arias squeezed my hand. When I looked up she brushed her lips against mine—no more than a cool breeze on a man dying in the dessert. She leaned back in her seat and we spoke as the driver took us down increasingly rustic roads.
“Joseph,” she said.
“Pardon me?”
“Joseph,” she repeated. “This was all about Joseph,” she said.
I already knew she didn’t mean Joseph of the Mary and Joseph gang. Helmet prepped me for that much.
“The ruler of Egypt?” I said.
It came out as more a question than an answer, but I pretty much knew I was going in the right direction. Helmet tried to lead me there fourteen hours earlier. Just like he tried to clue me in on the Charlemagne connection the day before.
“Kind of,” said Sarah Arias.
She told me the story of one of Jacob’s sons. Joseph was his father’s favorite. And the last straw for his ten brothers came when Jacob had a fine, multi-colored coat made for Joseph while the older brothers received nothing. Out of daddy’s sight, they pounced on Joseph and threw him into a pit. Ever notice how pits show up in stories on cue but you never seem to run across them in real life? Joseph’s brother Judah convinced the others to let the boy live and they sold him as a slave to a passing caravan. He ended up in a powerful Egyptian’s house. Sarah Arias said her master blessed Joseph and he became the leading servant entrusted with all his master’s affairs.
There’s always a beautiful, evil queen in most stories and this one came in the form of master’s beautiful—and horny—wife. When Joseph refused to do the horizontal tango with her she screamed rape and Joseph ended up in the dungeon. He remained there for years, and actually became a sort of prison trustee. He got recalled to the big leagues when Pharaoh needed someone to decode his dreams.
Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams when nobody else could. Impressive enough that Pharaoh ended appointing him in charge of all Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. A famine forced Jacob and his sons to seek refuge in Egypt. Joseph recognized his brothers and fell all over them with love and forgiveness. His father and brothers returned with all their relatives. Just like a Bollywood movie…I bet the long-separated brothers even sang and danced in the final scenes. Hence began the Hebrew stay in Egypt that ended with Moses and the forty-year desert thing.
Before he died, Joseph extracted a promise from his sons. When the Jewish people left Egypt they would take Joseph’s bones and bury him in the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Bones, I thought. Dry bones. I pointed at the purple bag and Sarah Arias nodded. If I understood correctly, the purse she carried contained the dusty bits of a great Jewish patriarch. A great-grandson of Abraham himself and brother to ten of the namesakes for the twelve tribes of Israel, and father of the other two.
I asked several questions. “How’d the bones get to Germany?”
“Crusades to roll back the Arab Empire,” said Sarah.
“Was Charlemagne in the grave at Aachen?”
“Yes,” she said, “but not in the cathedral.”
Seems they interred the old monk responsible for guarding the relic and called it reburying Charlemagne. She related how Charlemagne was properly seen to and how—surprise, surprise—Sparky was a trusted advisor when it all went down.
Sarah Arias completed the story as we turned off pavement and began rolling through the desert. We sat in silence for ten minutes while I let it all sink in. She left her hand in mine and I squeezed it a couple times just to remind myself this angel did exist and she was sitting next to me. And that she held my hand because maybe she wanted to.
Maybe the contact with Sarah Arias’s skin juiced my brain or maybe I finally had all the tumblers lined up. I tested out the theory on Sarah.
Sparky kicked the whole disaster off. Typical. He sat on the knowledge for a thousand years until somebody—likely Val—activated the memory. Val was a nouveau riche Russian oligarch, and I thought at first he wanted Joseph’s dry bones as a kind of private relic. He certainly wouldn’t be able to trumpet his discovery to the world. The German authorities might pose a few embarrassing questions to the Russian embassy.
I chewed on that line for a while and it didn’t taste right. First, the German government knew nothing about Joseph’s bones at Aachen and therefore would not connect the discovery with the robbery. And Val the art collector? More likely the recently-departed Val made his money selling arms. He didn’t give a rat’s butt about patriarchs or Jews or history. Instability in the world fed his bank account. Oh, he wouldn’t keep his discovery a secret. Not at all.
Did I doubt the Israeli Antiquities Agency would be able to verify the purple bag? Nope. They’d eventually have the world convinced. But nothing would really change for Val. The Jews would have their patriarch and the Arabs would maintain control of most of the region, and the minor league, less-profitable skirmishes would continue. No year-over-year growth in Val’s bottom line. Enter Prince One Way.
In his mind, for the discovery of Joseph’s bones to make any real change in the world it would need to act as a catalyst for Armageddon—the final battle between good and evil. Possessing the bones alone wouldn’t do that. But possessing them, verifying them, and then having an Arab destroy them? Instant nuclear holocaust. Israel and the USA, along with many Christians in the world, would finally stand and fight.
But if I heard Sarah Arias correctly, the Prince was an idiot. Joseph took an Egyptian wife and the two sons, both namesakes for two of the Hebrew tribes, were half-Egyptian. Did that mean most of the sectarian violence in the Middle East was brother against brother? Probably did.
Prince One Way would believe that war would herald the final victory for his side as much as Val believed it would cover that new mansion in Monte Carlo. Demon involvement? What would a demon love more than seeing Isaac and Ishmael at each other’s throats? Is it any wonder No Face found executive sponsorship among the higher echelons in hell?
It all fit. Except the part about how Sarah Arias ended up holding the bag. But how hard was that once I thought about it? Maybe I didn’t drop the purple leather bag at all as I rushed through the demon portal into the alternate dimension. Perhaps I had some help ridding me of the burden when all my focus was on getting to the people who’d imprisoned my friends. Maybe that heavenly sleight of hand prevented me from doing major damage to all of mankind. It didn’t seem so far-fetched. It sounded like the thing a real guardian angel would do.
I’d reached that conclusion as the SUV slowed to a stop on the rocky desert floor. Sarah Arias didn’t exactly give my story two thumbs up, though she didn’t contradict it either. I thought I’d hit the nail pretty much on the head. I followed her out of the SUV and we stood at the base of some old mountains.
The air came breezy and crisp into my face and I was glad I’d brought along a jacket. With the engine stopped, the world filled with the kind of clean silence I hadn’t heard in two thousand years. Sarah Arias put her arm through mine and stood with her head against my shoulder for a time that ended much too early.
She turned to face me, stood on her tiptoes, and planted a kiss on my lips much nicer than the one she’d surprised me with before. That tingling feeling returns every time I think about it. I thought if the few seconds of contact with her sweet—and tobacco-smelling—lips
represented the only joy I’d feel like this in life, then the first two thousand years were well spent. I hadn’t felt that alive since my precious Nellie died.
“Where are we?” I said when she pulled away.
“The honeymoon?” she answered.
If she wanted to give this thing we shared a chance to grow then she was going to need to deal with the fact that our family would have room for only one funny person.
“Funny,” I said. And then again, “Where are we, Sarah?”
“Where he is supposed to be,” she said, and she looked down at the bag hanging on her shoulders.
“I would think he’s in heaven,” I said in a half-chiding, half-serious voice.
“Oh he is,” said Sarah. “But there’s the matter of his bones and a promise made to him before he died.”
Promises must carry heavy weight in heaven. I needed to remember that the next time I found myself pulling out all the stops with a chick.
“Pig,” Sarah said.
This time it came in a whisper and a painful squeeze of my hand. I was pretty sure she meant the word for me and not the little Jewish guy stuck inside the purple bag.
“So what do we need to do?” I said.
“Not we,” Sarah Arias responded, “I.”
I thought she’d say that.
“No human can know where the two are buried.”
“That bag is a double?” I said.
Sarah Arias laughed out loud and she sounded so painfully human that I longed to heave the bag far into the desert and rush back to the hotel to begin the authentic honeymoon.
“No,” she said. “There is another whose bones rest here.”
“Give me a hint?” I said.
She paused for a moment and shrugged her shoulders.
“Yes, vampire,” she said, “a hint is OK.”
A few moments of thought and she said, “Moses.”
Those are the kind of hints I could use more of. THE Moses is buried somewhere out there? And now his forefather Joseph? Helmet would be enthralled. Actually, best not to think of Helmet at a time like this.
“So let’s go,” I said.