by Ramy Vance
Did I just say that? Oh well. The only way to embrace a tired cliché is to make it true.
I charged at Enoch.
‘YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE LAST OF ME’ IS SOMETHING VILLAINS SAY
I ’ve been in a lot of fights. Despite the last few months of my life, most of them have taken place in some dojo against a martial arts master. I’ve learned how to deal with opponents who were bigger, stronger and faster than me. I’ve practiced countless moves and counter-moves, all designed to help me win.
Or, at the very least, to help me not make a fool out of myself.
So when I charged Enoch, I expected him to get into some defensive stance or try to hit me before I could hit him.
What I didn’t expect was for him to do nothing. And in my arrogance, I thought that he had frozen, terrified of little ol’ moi.
Perhaps he couldn’t believe the love of his life was going to kick his ass. Or perhaps he just couldn’t believe I would dare attack him. After all, gods used to kneel before him.
Seeing my advantage, I upgraded what was intended to be a conservative move to—and I quote The Incredible Hulk here—SMASH.
I leapt into the air, seeking to drive my fist down hard onto the bridge of his nose. Not only would this break his nose, it would blind him, too. And if I put enough force behind the strike, it could knock him out.
Even with me in midair, he still didn’t move. He didn’t even look up to watch me come down on him. My fist connected, but instead of hearing the oh-so-satisfying crunch of cracking cartilage and bone, there was a dull thud as my fist exploded in pain.
I had broken at least two fingers on his face. Badly.
“Ahh.” I cradled my right hand. “What the f—?”
He sighed, showing me what looked like a small tin can of Vaseline. “A salve made from the rock bed of the River Styx. After your little move in the airport security room, I decided to use the same water Thetis did to make her child, Achilles, invulnerable.”
“Another gift?” I was trying to buy myself some time while setting my two broken fingers straight. I would need this hand if I was going to keep fighting, so bracing myself, I pulled at them, resetting the bones with a horrific crack.
I grimaced in pain, but I didn’t cry. Not even a little bit … Those tears were because I got some dust in my eyes. Honest.
Enoch shook his head. “Actually, this was something I made for myself. There was a brief period in my immortal life when I thought I should have taken a more active role in human development. I arrogantly believed that I could convince the gods to stay by forcing humankind to become more pious.”
“Tomás De Torquemada shit again?”
“Indeed. That was the original design for the Inquisition—to remind humanity of God’s will through—”
“Torture and death.”
“Through sacrifice and resolve. Unfortunately, humans tend to hear the message and then take it one step too far. That was an unfortunate time, and one that did not influence the gods into reconsidering their abandonment.”
“No kidding.” As we spoke, I was trying to find some kind of leverage to fight this guy. I could attack him, but not with the salve on him. Maybe I could give him a bath first? Given that he wanted to marry me, he’d probably be into that.
Who was I kidding? There was no way out of this now. I needed to escape. Run. Regroup and figure shit out.
I needed to get the Soul Jar to the archangel Michael in Paradise Lot and wash my hands of the problem.
If anyone could beat a former archangel, it would be an actual archangel, right?
“What now?” I thought. Well, I thought I’d thought it.
“Now?” A sad smile adorned Enoch’s otherwise stoic face. “Now this ends. For you, at least.”
↔
IN A BLUR of speed and grace, he grabbed me, lifting me overhead as one hand pushed against me and the other wrapped around my neck. He was impossibly strong. I mean, I’ve fought actual superheroes (long story) with super strength, and I could still get their arms to budge a little bit. But striking down on his elbow was like hitting an iron pole. It didn’t bend in the least.
“When I tried to kill myself up in Heaven, one technique I employed was strangulation. Hence the scars on my neck. What I forgot was how long it takes for a human to die from lack of breath.” He squeezed a little more. “And how painful it is.”
As he held me above him, my feet dangling several inches above the ground, an old lady walked under the arc of his arm like we weren’t even there. So much for a Good Samaritan coming to my rescue.
“Wait,” I tried to mumble, but under the pressure of his hand I couldn’t say anything.
A minivan pulled up, letting out several kids dressed in baseball uniforms. Two overly enthusiastic kids bumped into Enoch, momentarily looking up at him before shrugging and running inside.
So people might not notice him, but they could bump into him. And that nudge did cause Enoch to loosen his grip enough for me to take one breath.
As soon as the kids were inside and the minivan was gone, Enoch resumed crushing my larynx as he took a few steps toward the road to avoid being interrupted by any other passengers rushing into the airport.
“You broke my heart, Katrina. I truly believed that we would be together, but seeing your insolence, I know that to be false now. I will have to continue without you. I shall have to hunt down the were-hyena and changeling to retrieve my soul.”
Damn it, so he’d seen my little sleight-of-hand trick.
“But because I do still possess genuine affection for you, I promise you this: their deaths will be swift and painless. In fact, I will go one step further. They won’t even know what hit—”
Just as he was about to finish his sentence, a friggin’ bus rolled up onto the sidewalk and crashed right into him.
↔
THE DRIVER MANAGED to get far enough onto the curb to avoid hitting me, too, catching Enoch all the way to the elbow. The momentum of the blow caused him to fly forward, dropping me in the process.
Before I could even get my bearings, powerful hands picked me up and guided me to the open bus door, where—
“You’ve got to be friggin’ kidding me. You couldn’t drive?” I said, turning to Deirdre.
“I have never attempted to operate an automobile,” the changeling said as she pulled the lever, closing the bus door.
“You still would have been a better choice than him,” I said.
Egya’s hyena form chortled as the canine sat in the driver’s seat. Two front paws were dutifully positioned at the 4- and 8-o’clock positions on the steering wheel. His hind legs were on the accelerator and brake as his body sat at what looked like a terribly uncomfortable angle—for a dog, at least.
At least when Enoch turned him, Egya was big enough to reach it all and still be able to see over the dashboard … Thank the GoneGods for small—or rather, big enough—miracles.
“Move over,” I said, looking out the front window at a man who should be a two-dimensional stain.
Enoch was dazed, more from the shock of what had happened than anything else. But as he stood, I saw that he was gripping his side. Broken ribs, I mused. So he can be hurt.
“Let’s get out of here and disappear. If we’re lucky, we’ll never see that ex-archangel again,” I said, giving Enoch one last look. He just stared back at me with a maniacal smile on his face that I took as a sign that our little love affair was truly over. Like him trying to strangle me to death wasn’t enough of a sign.
The gloves were off now. I could see that in his eyes. No more banter. No more trying to persuade me to be the love of his life. He had underestimated the And they knew each other part of our relationship. Should we meet again, he would play for keeps.
Best course of action: get rid of the Soul Jar and make sure he never saw me again.
As if reading my mind, he pointed at his lips—evidently his stalking was so detailed that he knew all about my ability to read li
ps—and mouthed, “Katrina Darling, you haven’t seen the last of me.”
Normally a cliché like that would have me rolling my eyes, but seeing the deadly serious look on his lips made me and my newly reinstated soul shiver.
I slammed on the accelerator, and as we drove past him, he made no attempt to follow or catch us. At least we had one small thing going for us this day.
“Where are we going, milady?” Deirdre asked.
“We need to get out of Dodge.”
“Dodge?”
Oh yeah, I was back with my fae I don’t know human slang roommate. Sighing and not in the mood to give her our usual ‘being human’ lesson, I said, “We need to get off the island. But first, we have to take Egya to a vet.”
Egya snickered before licking me on the face.
THAT VOODOO THAT YOU DO SO WELL
I drove the ridiculous bus to Kokusai Dori, the main street that signified the center of Okinawa’s capital, Naha. There, I found the very same parking center where two Nio statues had almost ended my life only days earlier. But two gaijin and a hyena wouldn’t get far in a dented bus before some enterprising policeman pulled us over. Best to abandon the bus, and this complex was the only place I could think of to do so.
Getting out of the bus, I looked over at the spot where I thought I was finally going to say goodbye to this GoneGod World and sighed. “Ever feel like it’s one step forward, two steps back?”
I had muttered that out loud, seeking a wee bit of comfort from my companions. But given that Egya was a dog and Deirdre was fae, I really wished that my laments had been silent.
“No, milady,” Deirdre said with all the seriousness of a heart attack. “Did the evil man cast a confusion spell on you?”
Deirdre took my silence not as the intended You got to be kidding me, and said, “Milady, we are very much moving forward. Watch.” The changeling warrior took several steps forward before realizing that she had walked away from—and in the opposite direction of—the exit.
She’d need to walk back to me—in other words, backward—to get out of the parking complex.
I waited for her to make her way back to me. “See what I mean?”
Deirdre nodded. “Another human expression that is not meant to be literal.”
“Indubitably,” I said as we walked to the exit.
Egya was relieving himself on a nearby car.
“Egya, what are you doing?”
He finished his business before trotting over to me.
“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that was you literally throwing Enoch off our scent, right? The owner of that car goes home, Enoch tracks us by scent, follows said owner, thus buying us some time?”
Egya paused, cocked his head to one side in that way dogs do when thinking, and nodded. Given how long that all took, I knew he hadn’t thought of any of that and just needed to go.
“Genius,” Deirdre said.
“Oh yes,” I said, rigourously petting him behind his ears. “What a good dog. What a good, good dog.”
↔
I HATED DOING THIS, especially given what happened the last time, but I only knew one place where we could go to get help. Kenji’s izakaya. Well, that’s not true—we could find Jean and ask for military help. But given his commander wanted to basically enlist me as an indentured servant, making me go on black-ops missions for the U.S. military, I thought he’d be Plan B.
And Plan C would be Keiko. But given how badass Enoch was, I didn’t want to bring him to Blue’s doorstep. I couldn’t do that to them.
That meant that Kenji was Plan A. Plan A sucked. The last time I visited him, the place was attacked by monstrous statues, Kenji was arrested by the U.S. military and we almost died.
I’d definitely made a huge withdrawal from the Kat-Kenji emotional bank.
Still, he was an old friend. And a good person … well, Other. He’d help us. He had to.
I was about to go through the curtain that served as a door when Egya grabbed my hand.
Given that he was a dog, it was more of a bite. A wet, disgusting bite.
I withdrew my hand. “What?”
Egya motioned his head; he was trying to show me something. I considered going through the whole, “What is it, boy?” routine when I actually followed his gaze to what he was warning me about.
On the edge of Kenji’s door was what looked like a mezuzah, except the symbols weren’t the traditional Hebrew inscription, but rather a teeny-tiny pyramid with an eye in it.
The Eye of Providence. More like the ever-watching eye of Sauron. It was the celestial version of a hidden camera. So Enoch was watching this place just in case I got away. Which I had. Which meant that he was a planner. And a planner like him would also be watching my Plans B and C.
Shit.
There was literally nowhere for me to go.
↔
WE WALKED AWAY from the Kenji’s place back to the main street, where the generally human population looked at the giant hyena with trepidation. I ducked into the closest woman’s clothing store and bought a pink hat and a large kariyushi-wear shirt. “Here, put these on,” I said to Egya.
The giant hyena refused.
“Look around us,” I said. “People are scared of you. We need to cute-ify you so that we don’t add ‘in trouble with the police’ to our long list of crap to deal with.” I bent down to help him get the shirt on. It was harder than you’d think, but with only a little rip on the seam, we managed to get it around his body. I put on the hat, tying it around his neck. “Besides, pink suits you.”
And as we continued to walk down the street, I noted that the looks of fear were replaced with confused looks of amusement.
Baby steps. Baby steps …
↔
SO, we were out of friends, had no place to go, no vehicle to ride away in, stuck out like sore thumbs in a country that generally took notice of two foreign women with a giant dog and were being hunted by a guy who had access to the largest magical arsenal I’d ever seen.
At least I had my ATM card on me. Thank the GoneGods for small miracles.
Which was more than I could say for my passport. That was still firmly in the hands of Okinawan airport security, which, given that Enoch had basically enchanted the place, meant that he had it.
I imagined him perving over my passport picture and cringed.
“Where do we go? Where do we go now?” I sang to myself to the tune of “Sweet Child of Mine.”
“Milady?” Deirdre looked at me like I was losing my mind, which I very well could have been.
“It’s just that we’re out of options. I have no idea what or where we could go. We literally need a miracle, and right now miracles are in short supply—”
And as if my prayers were being answered, a miracle did happen.
A dirty, low-down, horrible, terribly ironic miracle in the form of a picture. A poster, actually, of an event that was to take place in Okinawa later that day.
And who was the star of the show? The very same dark elf who just happened to be my ex-boyfriend.
Yaay …
PART III
INTERMISSION:
Long, long ago, Enoch was a pious man. A unique one, too, who helped the angels in their civil war.
Back then, some rebellious upstarts wanted to usurp God’s power. Like such a thing was possible. They rebelled. They fought. But they were smart enough to know that they could not win a war in Heaven. So they fell to Earth and used its lush, primitive groups to fight.
Enoch watched as angels stabbed and clawed at each other. And seeing right from wrong, chose a side—the winning side.
He chose God’s side.
The frail human risked everything to save as many angels’ lives as he could. And his bravery did not go unnoticed.
He was taken up to Heaven—only one of three humans to gain such a privilege without dying to do so. There, he stood before a pleased God who demanded further service. For Enoch had witnessed the b
attles and judged wisely. He would become exactly that: witness and judge.
But a human cannot preside over lesser gods and angels. So God made him an angel. And not just any angel … a great archangel with powers that would rival even the archangel Michael.
And thus Enoch was transformed into an archangel of the highest order. He was given a new name—Metatron— and was tasked to judge over the gods and angels when they meddled in human affairs. His sole purpose was to punish those who went too far. Which, given the providence of the gods, was quite far indeed.
↔
And so he took to his role. Judging and punishing gods and angels, alike.
His last judgement was over Lyssa, the goddess of madness. She had turned the great Theban hero Actaeon into a stag before infecting his team of hunting dogs with rabies. Then she laughed as Actaeon ran for his life, the hunter now the hunted, only to be cornered and dismembered by the hounds.
The centaur Chiron had trained Actaeon, and brought a case against Lyssa, arguing that her cruelty went beyond the providence of gods. But in the end, Chiron had no case. Actaeon had stumbled upon the goddess Artemis bathing in a river and gazed upon her naked body. It was well within the rights of the gods to kill the man, even if he had done so by accident.
With Metatron’s judgment complete, he sought to take his leave, but was interrupted by the three Sisters of Fate. They had come to watch over the proceedings. Why? They already knew the outcome. The Great Tapestry had shown them exactly what Metatron would decide.
In unison, the three sisters spoke as if one. “Witness,” they chorused, “we have something for you to see.”
Another case to preside over?
As if sensing his question, they answered, “The gods chose to meddle, and such meddling will end all. Come see for yourself. The tapestry calls for you.”
Wary to listen, Metatron knew he should consult God—or, at the very least, a higher angel—before following creatures such as the Fates. But alas, Metatron had not fully freed himself from his human vices, and the vice of curiosity demanded that he follow.