After Benito got her unstrapped, he tried to help her stand up. Babette fell to the floor and started crying. He had no idea where the strength came from—Benito wasn’t a muscular man—but he hoisted her off the floor and slung her across his back, one arm between her legs and wrapped over to hold the butt of his stolen submachine gun, and the other wrapped around her arm, holding her to his back.
Little Benito looked just like the Protection agent he stole the uniform from, carrying a fallen friend out of a firefight.
Everything was foggy to him and the world seemed slower than paint drying. But Benito’s reactions were lightning fast in comparison. And then he knew his guardian angel was helping him.
Father Benito shot two agents in the hall as soon as he carried Babette out of her cell. And he shot two more as he headed toward the elevator to the lobby.
On the way, he barely heard Babette whisper, “No…” And when he hustled up to the elevator and pushed the button to bring it, she said, “We have to go back.”
Go back? Benito thought. “For what?” he asked her softly. He scanned the hallway for more agents. All he wanted to do was get out—get his love out of that hell. And the clanging and red lights blinking made it hard for him to think. He was on impulse and adrenaline now. The truth was, he wasn’t thinking.
“We can’t leave her with him,” Babette said.
Benito could barely carry Babette any farther. He rolled her off of his back and sat her next to the doors to the elevator. Then he knelt in front of her and caught his breath.
The fear and the hopelessness crept back into his soul. He wondered if he would ever be redeemed for his sins. “Leave who?” he asked. He couldn’t go back for someone else. He didn’t even know if he could get Babette up on his back again. “We can’t go back.”
“You have to,” Babette barely said. She raised her frail-looking face. “He’s going to—we have to … get her away from him. Leave me here, Benito … and go.”
“I’m not leaving you again,” Benito said to her. “God help me, I can’t lose you twice.”
Babette’s voice was weak. “You don’t have much time—he’s going to… You can’t let him do that. She’s … just a girl,” she said, trying to raise her hand to Benito’s face, but she was too weak and her arm fell back to her lap. She let out a big sigh as she said, “She’s yours…” And then Babette closed her eyes and slumped sideways to the floor.
And the elevator dinged … and its doors opened up.
REDEMPTION
— CXX —
LIVED AND LIFE observed the fall from the miserable confines of their cell. They had nearly recovered from the torture at the whipping hands of their only son.
Despite her condition, Life grinned an evil smile. Her plans were progressing perfectly. The little bitch, Fury, had simply to flick out a feather and end her father, Frank’s, life. Then predictably, she would beg for “God’s” forgiveness. From there, Life would smite her raping oppressor cellmate, and all would be as it was before—she would rule over her children and he would be her slave. “Perfect,” she said softly.
Lived knew Life had planned some sort of treachery—that was her way. Yet when it came to deceit, Father Benito—Faith—had written the book. And Lived would be Life’s devil forever. It was written in the Book of Blood. He almost winced as he watched Fury shoot their son with … nine feathers that he could count. “No,” he said, “ten of them. Your bastard appears slightly burned, Your Majesty. And he has interrupted your plan.”
“Once again,” Life said, “I believe you underestimate the female of my children. Sadly, it seems that is your blind spot. For you forget—” Then Life leapt to her feet and bared talon and teeth and shined her light as bright as she could, blinding Lived. And she pushed out all of her armored white feathers, just before she jumped and sunk the talons on her hands into Lived’s chest. “The debt of your vile vengeance against me is mine,” she screamed and clawed at him. “And I shall repay it ten times into eternity!”
— CXXI —
WHEN THE DOOR to the body-filled and gunsmoking interrogation room swung open, no one inside was prepared for what would happen next. And there wasn’t an angel in the room who could comprehend or react any faster than waiting for molasses to pour in winter.
And the black figure stood motionless in the doorway.
The hatchlings, flock-shocked as they were, actually saw the figure though the smoke first. And they all fled in slow motion, to the edge of the room and slowly slammed their wings behind them. And a loud faraway echo of clanking steel feathers reverberated in the room as they put up their shields.
And Fury tried to spin, but her turn started so slowly that it felt like her wings and legs were in a tar pit at the edge of the lake of fire. Her perception of time pulled on her legs, as she tried to flap her wings through a time full of sticky black grease that was determined to hold them in place.
Jump tried to flap one wing at her and shove her aside, but he winced and cawed out at the pain still in his chest and arms. Then he swooped a long powerful beat of his wings as pain crawled up his limbs and face like snake venom, slowly working its way through his bloodstream. He felt every muscle, every feather and every breeze all at once. Even the smell was so slow that he couldn’t get a whiff of the intentions of the figure coming through the doorway.
And then the figure was in the cell and yelling something, waving arms like wings at them.
Jump and Fury both saw the gun.
Jump had been shot enough for one day, but he could see that Fury was about to unleash, so he turned toward Mercedes. It made him angrier than he already was, that even his voice felt slower. “Motherrrr …” was all he could get out, before two more black figures appeared in the doorway, both of them shouting and yelling at the first one.
Jump’s feet moved like he was running in sludge, and it felt like it took forever to take one step.
By the time Fury spun halfway toward the first black figure, two more had appeared though the smoke. She aimed at them as they raised their guns up toward the first figure.
Fury and Jump watched the action and bolt on the second black figure’s MP7 slowly open and close in between the faraway muffled sounds of suppressed 9mm fire. Every last detail etched into their eyes like a stonemason chiseling granite statues as they watched.
They saw and felt the agent squeeze on his trigger and they heard the tendons in his index finger popping as they tightened. And the hammer released and slowly shoved the firing pin forward, and then the pin pressed into the tiny primer on the bottom of the bullet’s casing—Psssshhht! … Pop!
And they heard the powder charge catch fire, expanding and crackling as it burned. They felt the pressure of the gases as they expanded beyond what the little brass bullet casing could contain, forcing the crimped-in lead projectile on its tip to break free and start slowly moving down the barrel of the gun, twisting along the rifled grooves in the barrel, headed toward the tip—its only pathway to escape the rapidly expanding gases from the explosion behind it.
They saw the tip of the bullet poke out the end of the rifle’s barrel and small puffs of white smoke escape to the side all around it, finally free to find another pathway of least resistance. And the lead projectile inched forward like a snail, heading for some faraway piece of fruit to slowly chew into and eat.
And then the faraway-sounding report of the submachine gun—Ber … er … er … er … er … tah…
The first black figure’s uniform depressed slowly until it ripped, and the bullet slowly ate into his arm … and then his legs and then his chest and then the world spun back up like a shooting star through the black of the night!
Fury spun and released—she had no idea how many—and glowing orange fire-feathers cut into the second set of black figures, cutting them to pieces faster than their minds had time to realize that they had walked into a hornet’s nest of avenging archangels. And then they were dead—black chunks of protection and pain
.
And Jump hurled himself toward Mercedes, still strapped to her chair. He surrounded her with his wings as stray rounds ricocheted and pelted him, then fell to the floor, bouncing and coming to rest as lifeless as their masters.
And it was over—nothing but smoke and echoes left!
— CXXII —
SALVATION AND RAIN’S perception of the falls were different. Inside a fall, an angel was at the mercy of their perception of time; an observer saw everything as it occurred and all at once.
“What the hell does he mean, I’m way too easy on them?” Salvation asked no one. “I’m not too—I mean, I’m tough enough. You don’t have to beat on them all the time.”
Though Salvation was most likely speaking to herself, Rain had embraced and accepted her new role as the mediator between her father’s true nature and her mother’s understanding of who he really was. “You are quite forgiving, Mother.”
“What?”
“It is not what they need,” Rain said. “If they are to survive out there, they will require a more firm hand. Fury has this capability.”
Salvation jerked her head toward her daughter. “Oh, now it’s Fury has this capability, huh? Little—I am still your mother! And though you might not know it, I’m a little more worldly than you might believe.”
“Forgive me,” Rain said. She continued to watch Fury fall. “I only wish to—I am worried she will not choose correctly. With revenge only a few feet from her, how can she?”
“Rain,” Salvation said, trying to calm herself, “you can’t will it. You have to let it show up … on its own. You said it yourself at the beginning of this very day. Let her figure it out. The harder you tug at her, the worse it will get. Trust me on that.” She looked back at her own love and Fury deep in their fall. “If she is supposed to”—she shook her head—“I still can’t believe it. I guess maybe I am a little too naïve. I had absolutely no idea.”
Rain smiled. She liked that it had confused her mother. “Do you think I would have bared myself in front of him if…?” she asked. “Ich, disgusting! I have no idea how you and—I may have to take Fury’s advice and ban you from this.”
“Don’t push it,” Salvation said. “First things first. Are you sure that we can’t go down there and pull their sorry butts out of this? It looks like they’re making a complete mess of it. And your father doesn’t look like he’s helping at all. He just got himself shot … again.” By now she knew that a few flaming feathers weren’t going to be enough to murder the mean out of her husband.
“You know,” Rain said, “he told me once that getting shot in his chosen profession was simply an unfortunate—”
And Salvation completed her husband’s only explanation for coming home bruised, beaten or bloody, “Occupational occurrence,” they both said together.
— CXXIII —
FAITH STARED FROM the nothingness into his fall, looking at himself as Father Benito, kneeling in front of Babette. It couldn’t be. How could it have happened? She had never said a word to him about the girl—nothing in over sixteen years of their affair.
Faith had gone half-mad back in life, writing a book as protest in secret and turning to alcohol over the guilt. But God had spoken to him—sent him word after all. Given him an answer in a voice so loud and clear that there had been only one way he could have missed it. His answer: Benito’s daughter was hidden right in front of his face.
Faith remembered seeing the girl—Mercedes—over and over again, throughout his and Babette’s secret affair. All the while he was distracted with his own guilt, trying to conceal his sin from anyone who might catch him. He hid and cowered whenever Mercedes was around, sure as the devil that she would somehow know why he came calling so much.
Babette had assured him that the girl had no idea about the true nature of their relationship. To her daughter, Babette was simply another crazy mother, attending services and sermons regularly, occasionally dragging Mercedes to church, kicking and screaming if she had to.
When Mercedes was small, Babette even went so far as to have her little girl baptized. Afterward, the father’s own guilt could simply bear no more. He finally pleaded with Babette to stop attending church and only meet him in private and away from the reminder of his fallen faith.
And what of Faith’s book? Over twenty years of writing it. Another reminder that he hadn’t really been a man of faith at all. He hadn’t been for a long time … for more reasons than Babette knew.
But he had been sent a message. One of love and beauty and innocence. Yet he had ignored it, or not recognized it, or worse. He had openly neglected his responsibility to protect the girl.
He watched Mercedes fall into mischief and then sin. He even had conversations with Babette, trying to—now that he thought about it, she always referred to Mercedes as “our daughter.”
When Faith was Father Benito, he had thought Babette simply meant her and her husband, Frank. Now that he tried to remember the events more clearly, Faith realized that she had been trying to tell him all along. She must have harbored such guilt, such condemnation of herself. She was trapped in a mansion built on the foundation of her own lies … and his.
The love and beauty that Faith had longed for in life was delivered to him in the form of a beautiful little girl … and he had squandered the gift, seeking the “right” response from Heaven. One that he had been taught and trained to look for and understand.
Once Faith thought about it, Life was cruel enough to deliver her messages in exactly that way. Love and faith and joy, wrapped in a package—exactly what someone asked for—right beneath their blind, begging-for-forgiveness noses. So obvious that no one would see that was what they were—faith and meaning in a baby-bin, bouncing bundle of resurrection and redemption, fresh from the Med-mart.
But now, Life had manipulated Faith into allowing himself to be resurrected, not for redemption, but to punish him with knowledge like she had punished Man and the snake in the garden. She was a twisted woman whom Faith finally understood created her own ant farm, so she could burn the ants and watch them scurry around, trying to escape the searing misery … for her own pleasure and entertainment.
And as he stared at himself by the elevator, holding his own face and crying into his hands, he could feel that she was using him to help her get that power back.
When the elevator chimed, he dropped his hands and watched the doors open up.
Father Benito cried into his own hands, barely noticing the elevator doors as they opened.
The first perception he had of them was a bright blinding light and then pain that shot through his face. He fell backward and clutched at his head, and blood ran into his hands. Then there was yelling and wave-units squawking and he knew he had failed again.
His love sat dying by the elevator, violated and abandoned by her faith in him. How could she hold faith in him after that? If she wasn’t dead already… Benito didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted to join her—die next to her.
It had all gone horribly wrong. Every plan he had made, every dream he had dreamt, every call in the night he had answered from Babette, knowing that she would seduce his soul from his faith and into her flesh. It had all brought him here—a beaten blasphemer with a bastard child. But Mercedes was not at fault for his failures. Should she suffer simply for the sin of being born to weak and wanting parents?
Benito had made so many mistakes, and he had barely escaped judgment for most of them. It seemed that justice had caught up to him and he was at failure’s doorstep again. Would he ever fulfill his purpose? He wondered.
And the boots kicked into him and his blood flowed onto the black uniform he’d stolen. “Help me,” he muttered, more hysterically than directed at anyone who might provide assistance.
Faith watched himself as Benito, being beaten. This was not what he had returned for. This was not redemption—this was Life’s own revenge for him having written the Book of Blood. She had somehow found a way to punish him. A
nd he had given her the power of his own free will to do it.
Surely Faith had some power left, didn’t he? He could save himself. This was not how his life had ended anyway. Then he realized—his own daughter had had to kill him—Life was more cruel than he imagined. He had seen enough of the cruelty of her creations to know that the only thing her kind of power respected was equal response in return.
Faith sprang from the nothingness like a great eagle from a cloud. And he bared talons and loosed feathers in such a ferocious flight of fury that it even surprised himself. But it was nothing compared to the barely remaining chunks of the Protection Man-monkeys after he tore and plucked them apart in rage.
When Faith was done, he tilted his head back and screeched above his head. And all of the blinking red lights above the cell doors shattered and the loudspeakers blew up, and all of the remote-wave feed cameras exploded.
Then there was nothing left in the tunnel with Faith but Benito and Babette, both nearer to the darkness than the bathed-in-black tunnel—closer to death than to Life’s horrid version of living.
Bright light always made him squint, and Benito instinctively reached for his glasses. Nothing there, he thought, touching the empty pocket. Where are—where am I? He felt the smooth, slippery wetness on his fingers. Sticky.
Benito tried to lift his head and look at his hand, but fire shot though his chest and arms and pain pierced into his mind from everywhere. But he didn’t cry out. And the light was so bright.
Benito tried to look directly at it—that’s where his guardian angel had come from before—but it was blinding. Then he felt like he was floating, and he remembered. Mercedes, he thought. Have to get to her—have to save… “Mercedes,” he mumbled.
Then, almost as soon as he said it, there was her face, right over his, blocking out the blinding light. He smiled up at her. “You are…” he could hardly speak. He licked his lips. “You’re … beautiful.”
— CXXIV —
FURY RUSHED TO the first black Protection agent that had come through the door. The bastard needed to be finished off. But when she got there and saw his wounds, there was nothing more she needed to do. The agent was just about dead.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 49