It’s not long before we are both sleeping. And I got a stupid little rhyme jacking around in my head:
…some dreams we leave and some we don’t
And some we can’t … and some we won’t…
And I know I’m dreaming. I swear, if they…
The sound of a little girl, screaming bloody murder, snaps me back into my nightmare. And then there’s a woman crying with her. Not that I give a shit—there’s going to be plenty of crying soon enough. But this … the feeling is different from the choir. Not only do I want it to stop—it’s grinding my nerves like too much coffee—but I wanna find out who caused it and give them a little wing fillet. Who…?
The dream isn’t coughing up the answer, so I try to push my way to it—brute force, that’s the key. Well, mine, anyway. In another life, I would just torture it out of someone. But it’s not torture floating through this vision—something a little more … eternal. And I’m reaching for the name, and I see a tall, pointed building and I’m almost to the top… Gotcha!
— XXXVII —
I WAKE BACK up to the sound of the choir singing again. And the father’s still in his chair, reading away. Helluva alarm clock, I gotta tell ya. At least he’s not sticking a gun in my face. No idea how long I was out, but I can tell by the drops running down the stained glass above his office, it’s raining again. It’s a nice, comfortable, dim gray out. Makes me feel better. Seattle without rain is like cake without frosting—just doesn’t taste right.
He pauses when he realizes I’m awake. “Bad dreams?” he asks.
“Not as bad as some.” The others were worse. In fact, that one was kinda sweet-tasting. At least now I got a direction to point the vengeance that’s piling up. Vengeance in the house of the Lord… And I chuckle a little caw out at the thought.
I’m sure the cawing and cooing sounds take some getting used to. “Wh—what’s so funny?” he asks.
“Isn’t it all?”
“I … never considered…”
I smile at him. “Yes, ya did.” And I point at his book. “That’s a whole lotta considering in there.”
Underneath all the crispy belief in his tightly-pressed black clothes, his bright-red blood flowed through a big question mark in his heart … and he transfused it into his book.
But as much as I’d love to piss around, licking my wounds in church, shooting the shit with the fallen father, it’s back to the brimstone. She smacked my ass down to a church of all places, I think.
I’ll get to that little shit, too. Right now, I got a plan to kill a couple annoying little birds … with the same angry stone. “Pack up your penance. We’re going on a little trip.”
I smell the piss of fear ramp back up. Coming to grips with his book or not, he’s none too eager to go flying around in his own story, especially not with me. He says, “I—I have the church. And…”
But it’s a funny thing about curiosity, and he has to have a pile of it by now. You don’t write a book like that because you wanna sit in church, trying to convince people what you think is real. That book is about shoving it up the ass of authority. And in that, we both have serious questions for the powers that believe. And there’s only one place I can think of to sink a talon into them both … maybe all three. Wouldn’t that be nice?
“I can’t—”
“You want answers?” I say to him. And then I flex my wings and scrape the steel against itself. They’re strong—hardly a hint of the broken wing. “I know where to get ’em.”
“Where are you going?”
“Purgatory,” I tell him. And whether he likes it or not, “You’re coming, too.”
— XXXVIII —
THE TWO-STORY apartment perched atop the pinnacle of the Smith Tower in Seattle used to be some artist’s little nest of inspiration. No citizen really knows who lives up here now. Powerful people, they like to hide in the sky, above all the messes they make. And even if you know where they are, it’s almost impossible to drag them down to the street so they can clean it all up. But if you’re searching for the buzzard that just shit down on the rotting carcass of your life … look up.
I know who’s up here. Clawed my way through my dream to figure it out. It was easy to find the bastard after that. Hard to miss this assfucker’s nest. Even the tip-top of the building looks like the head of a huge cock, pointed straight up at Heaven, as if to say, “You’re next.”
Nice fake fireplace, though. It’s a huge, white-marbled monstrosity. I shake my head a little in disgust. The darkest creatures… Caves are always white. Everything is white in here, and he’s got two snow-white, full-curl, Dall sheep heads, stuffed and hanging above the fireplace.
He’s never been hunting in his life. And even if he had, Dall sheep? A long time ago—my father used to tell me about it—it was twenty grand apiece for a guided hunt in Canada. Twenty-five if you wanted to drag them off the top of a mountain in Alaska. Now, fifty thousand credits each … just for the heads. Only place to get them would be the black market. His wife probably “bravo mike’d” them because they looked chic in some old architecture magazine she read. Then again, she’s probably on the board of “People for the Elite Treatment of Assholes,” so who knows. And now I’m just working myself up, feeding my fire before I burn this place down.
The fireplace has a huge, six-inch-thick, marble mantel, too. Perched on it like an eagle—the ten talons on my toes, piercing into the soft rock… Yeah, I figured the talons out. Anyway, my wings tuck behind me nicely, right between the two sheep heads. And I reach out and stroke each of their necks—snowflake soft. It’s a perfect place to perch, while I watch this guy and his wife sleep like baby seals. His daughter’s room is in the loft on the second floor. For some reason, I can smell her up there. She’ll be down soon enough.
I listen to him snore for a couple minutes. Bet he’s not waking up to bloodcurdling screams from his daughter’s headaches every night. No, he’s smarter than that. And the first rule of drug dealer school is: Don’t shoot up your daughter with your own dope. Yeah, I figured that out, too. And I’m having trouble holding in my amusement.
Look at him—Francis King, CEO of King and Tamonos Enterprises—monarch on the mountain.
This isn’t the only mountain the good father and I are gonna visit today. I made him wait on the street. His part is down there. I don’t think he has the stomach for what’s coming up here.
I tilt my head and bob it up and down a little. There’s a lot of annoying little angel-tics I have to get used to. And my talons scrape a trough in the marble as I grip down, and they squeak softly. Doesn’t seem to matter, he is snoozing like a man without a care in the world. Up here—high above the cretins as they peck out lives from the scraps of the bones he sends over his railing— he can rain his benevolence down on citizens and consumers, like feeding ducks breadcrumbs at the State park pond.
I know it’s nice—not a pigeon shit of a decision in his life that will ever come back to roost and rain down crap on his roof. King… He’s the worst kind of ruler. Killer without a conscience.
Time for him to meet his match.
— XXXIX —
FATHER BENITO STOOD in the darkness and drizzle, in a doorway across the street from the entrance to the Smith Tower. He was so busy worrying about the instruction that his unholy creation, Jump, had given him, that he hadn’t realized where they were going when they flew there. But he knew this building. It was the same place that she lived. He had to shake the thought. One sin at a time, Benito, he warned himself.
The rain leaked over the edge of the hood of his black rain jacket and a few drops dripped on his lips. He ran his tongue over them and licked in the moisture.
Dehydration was a constant problem and he always forgot to get enough water when he drank. He pulled out his little flask from the back pocket of his pants and sucked down a small pull of State liquor. He refilled it during his unholy creation’s dream. A dream whose only details were that they were going to end every
bad person’s evil ways. Someone who preyed on children, Jump had told him.
Benito, he thought, you have come a long way. Are you ready to meet your maker? “I hope so,” he muttered.
Jacob’s… It was hard to think of the huge angel that way anymore. Unlike the gospel, Jump’s orders weren’t open to interpretation. The father only hoped he could carry them out, because the consequences were clear. “Do it or burn for eternity.” Jump had seemed sure that he could arrange for that fate.
The father had never intended for any of this. But try as he might, he had never felt the warm touch of the grace of God or heard the heavenly voice of The Father sing in his ears.
After his seminary and graduate thesis were over, he felt certain that God would speak to him … in some way, at least. Something to help him reconcile the vileness of humanity and the pain and suffering he witnessed in the world—solidify his faith.
But the warm breath of the Word never whispered in his ears, so he took it upon himself to reach toward God. What came out ate at his soul and fogged his faith. But the words would not stop and he poured them out in blood across the pages of his book. When he finished, he realized how dangerous it was, so he hid the book away in the basement of his church and convinced himself that it did not exist. His flask helped. Now his unholy book had spawned an avenging archangel that had the answers he craved. The price—denying everything he had ever been taught. It was not the path he had planned.
Then again, he had already strayed from his faith … more than once or twice. In another life, Benito, he thought.
He motioned the sign of the Holy Trinity across his chest, and then he reached in his pocket and pulled out his Rosary. His lips trembled as he kissed the black and red beads, and then he began.
He spoke from memory, barely hearing his own words. The events in the church proved to him that his rituals might be just that. The glass sliver of faith he had left was shattered along with the stained glass in the roof, but old dogs … and old habits died hard. So he chanted … and prayed.
— XL —
I SQUAWK OUT a loud screech at Frank and his wife in my newly acquired tongue. If the two of them were awake and could understand, it probably would’ve translated as “Wake your evil asses up!” I’m not a hundred percent sure, I’m still learning the lingo. But right now … I’m in a mood.
And all the glass in the place shatters, and there’s a helluva lot of it. The crystal chandelier explodes and the black market antique Chihuly glass art shatters everywhere. Oh yeah, no rules for the rich. The china, the dishes and the mirrors… Apparently, rich people like to look at themselves a lot. If I had to tally it all up, I’d say they got about seventy years bad luck, bursting and falling like raindrops of razors to the floor. Doesn’t really matter, when this is all over, seventy years will feel like a five-minute wet dream.
And Frank jumps out of bed first—off and over to his side of the bed—away from his wife. So much for chivalry. And he’s yelling at me. He hasn’t had time to figure it out yet, so he’s ranting at nothing, “What was…? Babs, what the hell’s going on?”
“Babs”… I assume that’s his wife’s name. When I look at her side of the bed, she seems a little more purposeful, and she reaches beside the bed and I see a flash of bright silver—holy shit, she’s got a gun on her nightstand!
No burying them six feet underground for her, I guess. I don’t know why I’m surprised by that, but before I can control myself I send a pinfeather at her shoulder and it zips through her back and right out her right silicone breast. The “pop” and ooze that follows confirms that.
Back when he bagged her, I bet she was as fine a trophy as the Dall sheep. Now, she’s a hagged-out bloodsucker, looking like some bounty killer’s bleach-blonde bitch. I send a couple of pinfeathers through her ass and hips—see if there’s silicone in there, too. And she’s spraying blood onto their nice white sheets and she starts screaming.
But somehow she makes it to the little pistol on her nightstand and she grabs it and spins around and—Bam!
And holy shit, blondie can shoot, or that was her last ounce of luck, because I feel the bullet sting as it slices across my face. And, not that I think it’s any threat to me—I feel the wound heal up pretty fast—but I’m still not used to getting shot. Couple of my bigger steel feathers later… It’s gonna take more than silicone to pump blonde-mommy’s deflated chest back up.
And Frank’s yelling, “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! …” Over and over again as if God is going to send her only son down to save him … personally. But that’s just how they think.
I smile from the mantel. Maybe she just did the opposite.
He stops barking fast enough that I know that bone was probably getting expensive to keep gnawing on. An arrogant dog can buy another bitch to bury his bone in, but a little tree squirrel, worried about losing his nuts in a nasty divorce…? I just did him a favor.
“Goddammit! What the hell?” And he’s jumping around in his little black silk boxers with his little Chinese symbol tattoo on his chest, and he’s waving his arms at me. “Jesus Christ! Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. I got—I got credits.”
And there it is—credits. That’s his real god—buy his way out of Hell. “Ass-ram rich,” I think they call it. He hasn’t got a good look at me yet, or I’m sure he’d be looking to negotiate with something else.
I don’t even have time for the contempt, before his little spawn screams her way down from her loft on the second floor. Even in the dark, I can see the tan against her little wife-beater t-shirt and too-tight, pink hip-hugger panties. She’s freshly back from Cancun, Mexico, or some other plump paradise, busting bills with her pussy-posse of Parisy wannabes.
And she’s got her mother’s genes—no way Frank’s involved in the birth of this little supermodel-in-training. For some reason, I feel like I recognize her, but blonde-mommy was probably banging some State Revenue usage agent so he’d look the other way at all the contraband they got in here. Not even his own kid?
And she’s yelling at her own parents to find out what all the commotion is about, and why she’s getting woken up when she has to catch a flight in the morning. She’s a furious little shit, I’ll give her that.
And the whole flock of them are a walking, squawking cliche in the sky. I wish they weren’t—it might make this a little tougher. No matter, when she sees her mother’s blood-soaked corpse, she flips out and starts dancing and hopping and holding her mouth, and then she just vomits all over the place.
That’s the drugs. I laugh out loud. I know, I know, but I just can’t help it. “Hey,” I say to her, “at least you won’t have to go in the bathroom and stick your finger down your throat.”
And I can feel them up in Heaven or down in Hell—wherever—judging me for my cruelty and indifference. Judge me? I am judgment—God’s judgment, her evil sidekick’s, maybe even the father’s, down on the street. But none of that is why I’m here. I’m here for my own. I would like to say I’m doing it for Amy … or Kelly, but that would be bullshit. This is about me.
“Shut up!” I yell at them both. It comes out as a deafening screech, and the glass doors to the deck of the penthouse blow out and so does the glass railing around it. And I laugh again and mutter to myself, “Glass houses…”
I think they get what I’m saying, because he shuts up. Her… She can’t help it and she’s sobbing and crying, grinding on my nerves.
“Just knock it off,” I say to her. “You’re hurting my head.”
And then I spread my wings out as far as they will go—give them a good look at the nightmare they just woke up in. And I flap them just enough to hop down from the fireplace and onto the floor. When I do, they both back up, and they go gaping-mouth silent.
“Oh … my … God,” he says.
Blondie-junior’s hysteria turns to awe—it’s not every day you see a winged man. “You!” she shouts it like she’s pointing to a jacker that just stole her purse. And
she’s looking at me weird. “It was you.” Then she looks at her mother. “You—you killed my mother!” she yells.
Guess it wasn’t awe.
“Mercedes,” Frank says to her, “don’t.”
I roll my eyes back. Of course. And I can’t wait until these pretentious pricks start naming their kids “Tesla” and “Prius.” And I fold my wings back in and pop out the talons on my left hand. That shuts her up.
And I walk to the woman’s lifeless husk, squat down, and look it over while they watch. Nothing is coming out yet. I wonder how long it takes?
It’ll be soon enough, so I grab hold of blonde-mommy’s chest and ribcage, and I feel my talons sink in deep—pop the sack of silicone shit on her other breast. The slippery slime oozes out onto one of my talons. Sticky…
And they both gasp hard when I fling her body out the hole in the glass wall. They watch with their mouths open—blondie-junior, trying to feel more by whining, and her father, silent, glad as shit that it’s not him. How do I know that? I can smell it on them both. And blonde-mommy and her oozing boobs arc and disappear over the railing.
Couple a seconds later, up comes that smacking, bone-splattering meat sound and “Mercedes” starts whining again.
“I told you to stop,” I say. “He’ll buy you a new one. You can probably share clothes. Win-win, if you ask me.”
I need all three of them, of course. So no one’s leaving the penthouse alive, but I’m not quite ready to let them know that. Something’s still itching me about this girl, though. And my mind is getting flashes of some kinda shit. Some roof, but not the—shit, I don’t have time for it. Cramming a year’s worth of revenge into a few minutes is difficult, even for a vengeful bastard like me.
I turn and look at Frank. “You know who I am, Frank?” He should know.
Even now, he thinks he’s important enough to banter. “Should I?”
“Don’t get cute.” And I start walking around the room slowly, hopping a little and tic-jerking my head from side to side, pacing my way back and forth.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 16