She looked at his black goggles and his helmet and then to the bullet holes in his uniform. She poked her finger into one of the holes and the man winced in pain. “Hurts, doesn’t it, bitch,” she said. “That’ll teach you, won’t it?”
Fury looked back at Jump, still wrapped around Mercedes. “Is she okay?” she asked. Then she looked at her little purgatories, cowering in the corner behind their shields. “Get your whining asses out here, purgatory little—come and look at him.”
They all stood up and fluttered over to the Man-monkey’s body, but they were afraid to get too close.
Fury frowned at them. “Put your faces down here—get a good whiff.”
They all leaned in as instructed and sniffed a little, then recoiled back from the smell and moved their heads to what they thought was a safe distance.
“Jesus Christ,” Fury said, “like he’s gonna bite you or some shit. That’s what they smell like before soul security comes and gets them. Once they do, they’ll mark them, and then they are their responsibility to carry back. Like, they can’t go back without them. You got it? Because that’s—shit, you ever get out of this and you’ll end up ferrying these monkeys back and forth out of here as one of your first jobs. Rain help us, Jump, can you imagine that?”
Jump clucked and chuckled from the other side of the room, and then he pulled his wings from around Mercedes. The girl was seriously messed up, but she would live. At least until the next time he had to visit her. “She’ll live long enough to take her first flight.”
“Oh, very funny,” Fury said, remembering her first fall. Then she looked back to the first Protection agent through the door, busy moaning and mumbling and leaking his lying life out onto the interrogation floor in the corner. “Think I should finish that one off.”
Jump looked down at him. “Let him suffer.”
She watched the man trying to move his lips and she walked over and knelt down next to him. She leaned over closer, putting her shadow on his face. “Mercedes…” the dying agent whispered.
“Yeah, yeah,” Fury said. “Like you’re getting to her. I don’t think so. You failed. No more sticking your cock where it doesn’t belong for y—”
Then the agent spoke again, “You are…” Fury watched him lick his lips—there was something … something familiar about it. “…You’re … beautiful.”
“What he saying?” Jump asked behind her.
Fury reached down and took the goggles off of the agent’s face. “Holy shit…” It was all she could say.
“What?” Jump asked. He wasn’t really paying attention to Fury. He was watching and wondering what to do about the two cowering loose ends in the observation room. He didn’t understand why the PAIC hadn’t come out shooting yet. That’s what he would’ve done … back then—now. “Don’t mess around with him too much, he might surprise you. We taught them how to take you with them when they kicked.”
“Jump,” Fury’s tone said it all.
Jump walked over, shoved a couple of the little cowering purgatories out of the way, and then he knelt down next to Fury. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Goddammit, what’s he…?” And he looked around at the carnage.
Two dead Protection interrogators, two cut-to-pieces sentries at the door, chopped up by Fury’s feathers, glass and rubble everywhere, and this one lone—Protection agents never went anywhere alone unless it was to take a piss. This was the boozing little priest—it was Father Benito.
Then Benito spoke directly at Fury, “I can’t—I never saw you before now. Too scared… I’m so sorry—she never told me about you.”
Fury raised her head and looked at the ceiling and the light of the truth of the room, blasted into her eyes and she squinted. “Goddammit,” she said. She had killed—well, she didn’t actually shoot him, but she hadn’t smelled him in time to save him either. “I gotta sit here and watch him die again?”
Jump knew what she meant. Fury had felt so guilty after the last time. But back then, the father had known it was coming. Still, Fury always had some unexplainable love-hate thing going with Father Benito—Faith—in Heaven.
Whenever she visited Rain, she would drop by to see him and chat or something. She never really talked about it, but Jump knew something was weird. He figured it might have been the guilt over cutting his head off, but in Jump’s own messed-up mind, he entertained the possibility that they might have had some kinda weird “older-man” thing going on. He teased Fury about it once—fishing for the truth—but she had almost beaten him senseless with her wings.
“Dammit,” Jump said, looking down at the father, “told you about what?” he asked.
Benito didn’t take his gaze off of Fury—he was almost spent. “I never… I would never have allowed him to…”
“Shit-shit-shit!” Fury shouted. She looked up at the ceiling again. “Is that all there is down here, lying and death?” She knew Life had to be watching. “You’re an evil bitch!” she yelled. Then she looked back at the father. “It’s gonna be okay, they’ll be down to get you. I’m gonna—I … I’ll check on you when I get back.” It was a lie, but it would make him feel better. “Try not to give any speeches until I get there, okay?”
“I… Father…” the father said to her, barely able to make sound now.
Fury looked at her little purgatories. A tear was forming in her eye, but she wouldn’t let them see that. “Take a good look,” she shouted at them, “because it doesn’t get any better than this. So you need to like … like, show some respect! Because I told you, that bitch will—”
“I’m so proud of you,” the father whispered. “You had such a hard… I wish I—I wish I had known…”
Fury couldn’t hold it back this time, and she leaned down to look at him as he left. A tear dripped on his face and she wiped it off. “Knew what?” she asked softly.
“I didn’t know I”—his eyes started to flutter—“the father,” he muttered. And then his head went limp and his eyes stared at the ceiling above her.
Fury stared down at Father Ben’s corpse. “Old cocksucker…” she mumbled. Then she looked at all the wide-eyed little purgatories, staring at her. “What are you looking at?” She looked back down at the father’s open eyes. “You see that? See what she did to us? It’s like … can you make this any worse. Delirious at the end of—no peace at all. Babbling his own name. It’s just…”
Jump leaned back and stood up. There was still work to do, and so far his little “loose ends” had been content to hide behind their wall. It was a good thing for now, because if they did pop their heads out after the “father” thing, he might not be able to hold Fury back this time. Jump stared through the blown-out window to the observation room. “That’s not what he said.”
Fury looked up. “What?”
“He wasn’t saying his name,” Jump said. Once he got up close, he could smell it on him. Too much love for an old man’s lust. Only love smell stronger was—“He said ‘father.’ ”
“Yeah,” Fury said, “that’s his name—father.”
Jump eyed the observation room, looking at K&T’s huge logo on the back wall. He still couldn’t figure it out. Wings and snakes and a spike, he thought. Devils…
Rain was right. Some things people needed to figure out for themselves. It was actually why Jump had delayed his talk with her for so long, pretending to let his daughter weasel her way out of it time and time again. He wasn’t one to let anyone weasel out of anything. He was surprised that Rain hadn’t caught on. But that’s what love did—blinded everyone who looked at it.
The truth of it was that Jump wasn’t sure Salvation was ready to hear it. She definitely didn’t know. But ever since that night in the father’s church, Rain and Fury had become more than good friends. And though he knew neither of them had figured out what to do about it yet, sooner or later that shit had a way of “figuring” itself out. “Look,” he said to Fury, “I’m gonna go ahead and let you get to this one on your own. Because when you see him again,
you need to tell him the truth.”
“Truth?” Fury said. “What truth?”
“About how you feel,” Jump said. “They deserve that.”
— CXXV —
FAITH STARED DOWN at Babette. She was still limp next to the elevator, but now surrounded by the blood and brains of the half a dozen Protection agents that he had just torn apart.
In life, the elevator was his moment. One of them, anyway. He’d had many of them, really. Chances at redemption—opportunities to do the good thing. Turn left and hide or turn right and live.
Looking back, they all seemed so simple. Lean a little this way or that, look the other way at the immorality and depravity that surrounded him. Stay silent in fear and not roar like the lion his father told him to be. In the end, there had been consequences on both sides of each decision he made.
Playing it safe hadn’t offered any more safety than throwing himself into the arena with the lions. Those he could have helped, should have helped, languished under the weight of his inaction—his fear and lack of conviction.
What would have become of them if he had thrown himself in front of the flames that now burned around everyone he loved? Would he have suffered any more than he already had by doing nothing? Would they have suffered less?
The most good he had done in his life was at the threat of death from an ex-Protection agent who had seen the error of his lying and brutalizing ways. Certainly if Jump could find redemption, Faith could find his own truth? Was his book his only destiny? He hadn’t believed it, but he had lived the lie for so long that each time he imagined the consequences of facing it, his fear chased him back to the comfort and warmth of his own deceptions.
Faith hardly noticed the tiny red specs at the other end of the pitch-black tunnel. With the lights freshly blown out and the long hallway bathed in the black of deep, dark lies … he should have. When the red specs finally got close enough for him to notice, it was almost too late.
He spun away from them and slammed his wings behind his back, just as the first of the red fire-feathers sliced into him and burned into his shield. And he yelled out and whipped his wings wide open, breaking the ends of five feathers, burning their way into his steel.
“I can smell that you’ve finally figured it out,” the voice laughed from far down the hall. “Naughty, naughty, Ben. Always poking your stick where it doesn’t belong. Now look at her. And her daughter? Shameful, it’s just shameful!”
Faith knew the voice. But lost in self-loathing it was hard to protect himself. “Did you do this to her?” he asked. “You filthy dog!”
“Wages of sin,” Dogg’s voice came back. “You should know that better than anyone.”
“She’s not dead,” Faith said. “Which is lucky for you,” he muttered. He could just make out the outline of the archangel, Dogg, at the far end of the darkness. And he spun and fired as many fire-feathers as he could, releasing the telltale golden streaks of the followers of Rain. Then he watched as they grew smaller and smaller and then hit their mark. And he heard the echo come back—flaming metal piercing steel shield. And a few seconds later they all fell to the floor and their lights flickered and burned down.
And a growl and a howl wafted back from the darkness. “Owooooah,” Dogg’s voice echoed down the hall, “nice to see you’re not impotent. Man of your age—need to be careful firing all those feathers at once. Never know when they’ll turn up limp. Looks like you got a little sting left in you, though. Then again, so do I. She wakes up, you can ask her about it.”
Faith paced back and forth at his end of the tunnel. He glanced down briefly at Babette on the floor.
It was another test—another crossroads to face. Run like his instincts begged him to, or stand and fight as he wished he had in the past. “I feel for you,” Faith said. He pushed out all of his armored feathers and tightened them against each other and they scraped metal on metal. And a loud squeal reverberated as sparks flashed and fell, burning down to the floor.
“Aw,” Dogg yelled back, “don’t you worry about me. She felt enough for me and you both.”
Faith stopped and faced him. He had made his decision. “Then I shall put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you,” he said.
“Damn,” Dogg’s voice wafted back, “you are one helluva hypocrite, Ben. Spouting that Bible shit at me like that. Right after she told you that she—you’re a priest, for God’s sake! How did you think that that was okay? I mean, what did you tell yourself … when you were about to stick it in her? What, you just hold your hands over your eyes and plan on asking for forgiveness later? How do you even get it—how did you think you were getting back after that?”
“I may not go back,” Faith said. “I may never return to my faith, but I’m sending you back, so you may beg for forgiveness from your master.”
“Don’t worry about her either,” Dogg’s voice shouted back, “there’s begging all right, just not for forgiveness. So what do you say we stop—?”
Around a hundred tiny pinfeathers pelted Dogg all over his body and wings and arms, stinging him like little wasps. And a couple even streaked through his cheeks and he yelped like a hound getting whipped with a stick. “Dammit!” he yelled, and then he ran and took off flying toward Faith. “Sneaking son of a bitch,” he said, flying faster and wiping blood from his face.
Dogg could see Faith, flying at him from the other end of the tunnel. Closer and closer the angel streaked at him, and faster and faster Dogg flew.
Then Dogg twisted in mid-air and loosed pinfeathers at Faith—he could play that same little trick.
And the pinfeathers streaked into Faith’s plumage and ripped and tore at metal. Then he twisted himself and loosed as many glowing-gold fire-feathers as he could. Golden-yellow streaks burned down the dark tunnel.
And Dogg fired his red fire-feather tracers—the color of Lived and Life’s armies in the dungeons.
And burning gold feathers passed raging red ones, in a fireworks display that would have looked beautifully magical had it not been for where they were headed … and what they were meant to do.
And flaming feathers pierced both of their armored feathers and they both broke wing quills and crashed, sliding along the slick floor of the tunnel until they slammed into each other.
Dogg rolled and pounced on top of Faith, and he grabbed around the angel’s neck with both hands, sinking his talons in, and Faith coughed and choked.
Faith beat at Dogg with his wings and cut and sliced Dogg’s feathers. Sparks flew and Dogg growled and Faith flailed at his attacker. Neither could fire feathers this close together.
Faith sunk his talons into Dogg’s side and legs, and the animal let out a horrible yell and then started yipping.
Then Dogg let go of Faith’s throat and sunk all of his talons into Faith’s chest and stomach, and Faith screeched and screamed back.
Feathers broke and talons dug through metal and found flesh, and red and black blood flowed—from right hearts and wrong ones—and they both screamed and growled and screeched in anger and agony.
Faith rolled with Dogg and he got on top of him, and then he flapped and slapped his wings at Dogg’s face, cutting and slicing into his cheeks. But Dogg rolled back on top of him and choked Faith again.
Faith coughed and struggled for air and turned blue, while Dogg growled and laughed out loud. “You wanna spout the Word?” Dogg said. He gripped tighter as he spoke, “Any slave who knows his master’s will … and doesn’t prepare himself for it”—Dogg beat his wings at Faith’s head—“will be severely beaten!”
After a few seconds, Dogg could feel Faith’s strength starting to leave him and he let up just enough so the fallen archangel could breathe—come back to life. There was no sense killing the little bird quickly. He wanted to toy with it before he ate it.
Dogg shoved himself off of Faith’s chest and then stood up and spit. He looked at his wing—feathers missing and broken at the tip. Then he frowned down at Faith. “You w
ant to hear the Word from her Bible?” he said. He swung his other wing down at Faith and clipped off the tip of Faith’s wing. “There’s a little wing for a wing for ya.”
And Faith’s wingtip sprayed blood across the floor and he screeched and folded it over his chest, grabbing onto it with one of his arms. He rolled to the side and spoke softly to himself, “I have done all that I can to live in peace with everyone.” And he tightened his wing and he held it firmly back with his arm, tensing every feather in his body. And God or Life or Rain or no one at all, Faith spoke softly to himself at the end of his fall, “I am a servant for good. But if you do wrong to me or those I love, be afraid, for I shall not bear my sword in vain”—he even rolled the dice on defying the blasphemy covenant, because he figured he wasn’t going back anyway—“for I am a servant of gods, an avenger who carries out their wrath on wrongdoers.”
“What are you muttering down there?” Dogg asked. Then he leaned down and turned to the side a little, so that he could hear. And he opened his wings just in case he had to pin the old angel down again.
Faith tensed up even harder, pulling on his wing until he thought he might break it, then he released it from his arm’s grip and let it spring loose like a rat trap. His wing sliced through the few feet that separated him from Dogg’s back and his steel feathers and bone cut clean through the base of Dogg’s outstretched wings, and both of them flapped one last time before they spun to the side of the tunnel—cut off.
Dogg howled, yipped and yelped, and his back sprayed blood, and he cried out and whimpered, “Aaaaaah!” He rolled on his back trying to make the pain go away. But when he did, the stumps of his wings shot pain and agony into his spine and he cried out again and flung himself at the wall, trying to make the pain stop, and everything he did just made it worse.
Faith rolled over and watched as Dogg bounced, hopped and howled himself down the hall. Until he finally stopped and whimpered against a wall.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 50