by Ramy Vance
Aldie pulled me in close, kissing me with every fiber of his being and, at that moment, I’d like to say that I remembered Justin. Remembered that I had a boyfriend—a very hurt boyfriend—who was probably wondering where I was.
But Justin was the last thing on my mind. Hell, breathing was the last thing on my mind. All I knew at that moment was how warm and safe it felt to be in his arms. The outside world, with all its warring and squabbling, maniacal, wannabe gods and lost mortals, death and life … none of it meant anything.
All I knew was Aldie. And that felt great.
After what felt like an eternity, Aldie pulled away, grinning at me with those impossibly deep dimples accenting his smile.
It took me a moment to remember why I was here, but the memory of Enoch’s little bag of tricks jolted me back to reality. I cleared my throat. “As I was saying, before you say anything …”
“And I said nothing.”
I touched my lips. “I think you said plenty. Now, if you’ll hear me out …” I began turning away so that I didn’t have to look at him as I asked—nay, begged—for his help.
But Aldie was in front of me in a flash. I swear he must have burned a bit of time to get in front of me so fast. “No. After all these centuries, you have found your way back to me. Whatever it is, whatever you need, the answer is yes. I only have one condition.”
“I’m not sleeping with you.” I immediately regretted saying that. Aldie may have been a dark elf from the UnSeelie Court, but he was not the kind of person to ever use his position to get what he wanted.
He looked down at me with his perfect, cloudy gray eyes, and the storm within them seemed to grow at my suggestion.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s been a long day. Hell, a long re-humanization, and I’ve only been that for four years. What is your condition?”
“That you look me in the eyes when you ask for what it is you need from me.”
“That’s it? Look you in the eyes?”
He nodded, his lips pursed, and I suddenly got very defensive. I remembered what it was like being his girlfriend, and why we broke up. The fights, the deceit, the lies. “Why do I need to look you in the eyes, Aldie? Because you think I might lie to you and—”
“No,” he said with a force that stopped my would-be rant dead in its tracks. “Let us not follow that old script of distrust and anger. We might have once been monsters, but that was who they told us to be. The gods are gone, and they have taken their antiquated expectations of us with them. We must be different. We must change. And in changing, we will finally embrace the destiny that we chose, not the one chosen for us.”
“Yeah, yeah … I get it. What’s next? You’re going to recommend I take a swim in Lake Me, or some bullshit like that?” I said, rolling my eyes. “I saw you out there. You seem to think that we’re different because we’re mortal now. Come on! It’s not like you’re not playing some game with them and getting paid through the nose to do so.”
His stormy eyes grew grayer … not with sadness, but anger. “I am not that man anymore.”
“Sure you aren’t. Come on, it’s just the two of us here. Fess up.”
“I am not.” He clenched his fist. Here came the Aldie I knew. Fiery and loud, ready to break the world with words that poisoned more than venom.
But instead of falling into a punishing rant, he took a deep breath before saying, “It is funny how the old demons struggle for renewed life. No matter how deep I bury him, he wants to take the reins again. But I will not allow that. Never again. I am mortal, and my ‘new soul,’ as you mock me for, demands that before the true me. A ‘me’ who will finally get a chance to embrace the full potential that was always nestled deep within.”
“You should write a book.” I picked up a copy of The New Soul sitting on his dresser. “Oh wait, you already did.”
“Aye, milady, that I did.”
↔
“KITTY KAT,” he started. “Sorry, Katrina. I am a different elf now. You may not believe that, but I am. I have embraced my destiny. And that destiny was to help Others.”
“As in, with a capital O.”
“No,” he said, clearly listening in on my thoughts just like when we were together. “I mean it with a capital Everyone.”
“Give me a self-help guru break, will you? Besides, since when did you get a destiny?”
“Since I searched my past and found it.”
“So all the boozing, cheating, fighting and lying … it was hidden under there.”
“No, it was hidden under the responsibility of my family that I once turned away from. They may have been the aristocrats of the UnSeelie Court, but they always wanted to help. That was their calling. And that was the calling they wanted for their wayward son. But they’ve been gone for a long time now, and so are the pressures I once hid behind. And it is in their absence that I pick up the mantle that was always my inheritance.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, say something rotten and demeaning, but who was I to do so? I mean, I literally wore my father’s mask from time to time. Was I also picking up his mantle?
As if answering a question I knew I hadn’t spoken out loud, Aldie said, “It took me a while to understand them, and at first I didn’t embrace all of my destiny, simply helping those before me. But their full manifestation requires that I be a role model for the world, not just a good person.”
I thought about my father’s Divine Cherubs, how he led them, guided them through the perils of the underworld. All I did was wear the mask and did what I thought was right when what was wrong presented itself to me. So no, I guess I hadn’t fully picked up his mantle. Yet.
“So you’ve really changed?”
“I have.”
“No more lying, fighting, cheating?”
“No more lying and cheating. I still throw down when needed.” He lifted his fists up in the manner of a gentleman’s fisticuffs.
“Alright, I believe you. And I need your help.”
“Anything. Just—”
“Look you in the eyes. Got it.” And so I did. I looked him in the eyes and told him everything.
When I was done, I felt like a great burden had been lightened. Not lifted off my shoulders, mind you, but lightened, like Aldie had volunteered to carry it with me.
“OK, my dear,” he said. “I have a sure-fire plan to help your friends and get you to Paradise Lot. We can turn your friend back to a human through meditation.”
“I doubt that listening to whale sounds and—”
“Trust me. The way I do it could turn a chicken into a scholar and a hyena into a boy. I’m extremely zen.”
“I have no doubt you are.”
“And as for getting back to Paradise Lot … I have a private jet. So, problem solved.”
A private jet? Of course he did. But seeing as how he was going to help me and Deirdre and Egya get where we needed to go in that private jet, I only nodded. “Thank you, Aldie. I owe you one.”
“Pish posh … you owe me nothing. Not after I—”
I lifted a silencing hand. “No. Not now. I’m being stalked by an ex-archangel. I don’t think I can handle a heart-to-heart on top of all that.”
“I understand. Another time. Until then, let us marvel at how destiny still works in this GoneGod World.”
“Destiny?”
“Oh yes. I wasn’t supposed to be in Japan until the start of the new year, but the vendors offered me the auditorium for free, as well as robust promotion. I may be rich, but I’m also a bargain hunter. I couldn’t turn that down.”
“Oh no.” I grabbed his hand. “How could I be so stupid? Of course you’d be part of his plan.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And you don’t need to now. Now, we need to get out of here.”
But before I could say another word, a raspy voice said, “What a wondrous reunion. I had planned on interrupting earlier, but I could not help myself. I wanted to see how far you two would go. I must thank you, Aldie. You h
ave shown me the way to her heart.”
“What? Who are—?” Aldie started, but before he could finish, Enoch held out a crystal-looking disk.
That was the last thing I saw before falling into total darkness.
↔
WHEN I WOKE, Aldie and I were hanging from metal piping in some dank cellar. Our feet were several inches above the ground, and we were barefoot. “Why do the assholes who are into creaky basements and torture always take off your shoes?”
“To provide our guests with the most comfort,” Enoch’s voice rasped from behind us.
“Private thought,” I shot back. “Not for you.”
Enoch walked in front of me with what looked like one of those 18th-century medical kits. “Oh, dear Kat. Very soon it will all be for me.”
Aldie burst into speech. “The inner child always demands that the world give him everything, even when he has not earned it. But the path to true happi—”
Without turning around, Enoch pulled out four needles that were probably used to stitch up Frankenstein’s monster and stabbed them into Aldie’s chest.
“Ahh.” Aldie let out a muted moan before catching his breath. “But the path to true happiness is purpose. And each one of our purposes is as unique as the fractal, crystalline patterns of a snowflake,” he panted.
“Was he always like this?” Enoch asked with genuine curiosity.
“Oh yes,” I said. “For as long as I’ve known him.”
“Humph,” Enoch said. “Torturing him will give me more satisfaction than I anticipated. But as for you, dear Kat, believe me when I say I will derive no pleasure from what comes next.”
He punched me in the stomach.
“Well, I may have overstated my position. There will be a little pleasure in it for me.”
To be continued …
PART IV
INTERMISSION:
Metatron knows he should not meddle in the affairs of man, but to ask one such as him to do nothing now that he knows the gods are preparing to leave? Inconceivable. That is why he travels to Earth after hearing the Fates’ words and seeing their tapestry.
He goes down to Earth to … well … meddle.
First he finds a creature of influence. A man of the cloth, as the humans say. This particular man is not only pious, but a human who possesses great resolve. Just like Metatron did when he, too, was mortal.
Tomás de Torquemada. A man capable of great love for God and little else. A man who will do anything and stop at nothing in the service of God.
Coming to this human as the angel that he is, he tells Tomás that humanity has lost its way. That their pitiful worship is not enough. He guides the human toward a great reformation, insisting that humans either fall to their knees in worship or death.
Imbuing this man with the tools necessary to usher in a new era, Metatron watches as the will of God is enforced on all. If such worship does not convince the gods to remain …
Metatron does not allow himself to complete the thought. This will work.
This must work.
For the sake of all, the gods must remain.
↔
When the era the humans would later call the Grand Inquisition reaches its greatest heights, Metatron returns to the Fates to see how his influence has affected the future of all.
But the room housing the Fates’ spindles, which created the Tapestry of Destiny, is not as he left it. Instead of the magnanimous weaver marching on and recording time yet to be, instead of every nanometer of fiber documenting a lifetime—every strand the rise and fall of an empire—the grand loom has ceased its endless chatter.
And at the fringes? Instead of the vibrant colors both named and unnamed, the last line ever woven is black. It’s an ebony so deep that to gaze upon it is like staring into the very essence of nothing.
The three sisters slouch by their broken loom, none of them moving or speaking. A room that once held the wonders of the universe now feels like a back room in some war-torn bazaar.
Entering, Metatron feels something he has not felt since being transformed into an archangel.
Fear.
“What has happened here?”
“The loom no longer sees the future,” the sisters chorus in despair.
“How can this be?”
Metatron does not know how the magics of destiny work. He doubts even the gods fully understand what the future is. What Metatron does understand is that the future is unset, can be molded by the hands of those working the present. It can always be changed. It can always be … influenced.
But this darkness means that there is no future. There is nothing.
“Do the gods mean to destroy the universe?” Metatron mutters.
The eldest sister’s shoulders slump even farther forward than before. She points to the corner in the back—the original patch she showed Metatron before. “Here is where the gods left. Here is the patch we showed you. But even with their departure, the loom wove a sea of black where the future could not be seen.”
“Yes,” says the second sister, “but now that you return, whatever it is you have done has ceased the weave.”
The third echoes, “Whatever you have done has put this world on a path to nothing.”
“What I have done?” Metatron’s voice rises like a petulant child denying his actions. “I have forced the humans to believe again. I gave them the Inquisition. The movement will force them back to piety. Back to worship again.”
“No, you have set the world on the path to its end.”
Metatron does not believe it—cannot believe it. In his centuries of being the Watcher, Metatron has never lifted his hand in anger or violence. But in this moment he charges at the three sisters, subduing them under his power.
Then, as if plucking a ripe grape from its vine, he pulls out a single eye from each of the sisters. They scream in protest, but in his frenzy he does not hear them.
Using the infinite magic within him, he turns each of the eyes into lenses so that he may read the carpet’s tapestry as they do.
He starts from the end, the blackness of nothing. He knows that the last weaves of the world do not speak of the end, for with every end there is a new beginning. The last weaves tell an anti-story where nothing will ever begin again.
This finality will occur after the gods depart. But how long after? He cannot tell.
Seeing that the end reveals nothing, he finds his own thread, examining it from the moment he first met the sisters.
He sees himself entering their chamber all those years ago. He relives the moment when they tell him about the gods’ departure. He understands that they are trying to manipulate him into using his power to prevent the gods from leaving, and that they have succeeded.
He follows his actions, after which the carpet’s weaving become erratic. Mottled.
Named and unnamed zigzags of colors play out. But instead of telling the story of all, they do so in chortled mutterings, like one trying to recall a dream. Fleeting and mottled.
But not all of the tapestry is confused. A few threads hold steady, marching forward through time with recognizable coherence. One of those threads intersects with his own.
Interlaced, it anchors his own destiny up to the point when the gods leave … as if without it, his own future would be random and formless.
The two threads continue side by side. And side by side, they penetrate the moment when the gods leave.
Metatron leans in close, studying this thread with feverish vigor. “Who are you?” he mutters. In answer, his mind’s eye presents a name. A human name that will guide his every action from this moment until long after the gods leave.
But at the moment of revelation, all Metatron can ask is, “Who is Katrina Darling?”
BEING TORTURED TO DEATH WITH YOUR EX ISN’T FUN
“T his is the part where the hero gets tortured. This is the scene where the villain comes up to the hero—moi—and waves some instrument of pain in her face, threatening this and that b
efore finally stabbing her with the pointy bit. In the movies, the hero would resist and refuse to tell the villain anything (in this case, where the GoneGodDamn Soul Jar is). The villain will get frustrated, decide on another tack, buying the hero enough time for either a chance to escape, or for her friends to come in and save the day.
“Except I’m no hero. I’m just an ex-vampire trying to figure out what it means to be human again.
“I don’t want to feel pain. I don’t want to suffer. I just want to go home, snuggle up under my duvet and watch Legally Blonde. So I should just tell him where the damn Soul Jar is and be done with it.”
I stared up from my precarious dangling position to where the villain and my ex-boyfriend stared at me in genuine bafflement.
“You were thinking out loud,” Aldie finally said.
“Yeah, I do that.”
Enoch, who had only moments earlier been edging toward me in that cliché menacing way, surgeon’s scalpel in hand, stopped. He put down the blade and crossed his arms.
“Ahh,” I said, “you were about to start torturing me.”
“Indeed, but I think I’ll take a moment to see how your thoughts pan out. If you take them to their only logical conclusion, I see a path which allows all this to be bypassed.”
“You’re still holding out hope?”
Enoch’s eyes widened slightly, betraying that he did.
“After all this, you still think there is a chance for us.”
“The Fates showed that you and I will be together in the end.”
“Yeah, and they’re never wrong?”
There was a slight creaking from the pipes that held Aldie. “Fates?”
“Apparently our torturer saw the two of us standing with the gods before the end of the world.”
“Cool,” Aldie said with genuine appreciation. “I get that.”
“How the hell do you get that?” I growled, twisting just enough so that I could look into his stupid—perfect—dark elf face. “I just told you that this guy spoke to the Fates and that the last thing their damn visions showed him was him and me, together, in front of gods … after the world ends. And all you can say is, ‘Cool … I get that,’ like some damn stoned-out hippie tripping on laced weed.”