Barbara’s nightly warning for day ten the next day included something about fire, but … to tell you the truth, I hadn’t heard some of it, because I was so busy taking in her sweet smell that I didn’t pay very close attention to the details. It didn’t bother me, because on every other day I had fallen into a “keep your mouth shut, stare straight ahead, and don’t move” defense, like some desert animal I’d read about that used camouflage and remained motionless to avoid detection by vultures like our Father Dominic.
So when the good father took his position at the huge pulpit that morning, I was almost smiling, daydreaming about Barbara and reveling in my good fortune. Then the PI’s entered the crowd of our formation and started searching for the day’s “fingerling”—anyone who they thought didn’t stand straight enough, or tall enough, or whatever other criteria they had for breaking a finger to prove a point in the morning.
Sure enough, seconds later, we all heard the telltale SNAP! And then the wailing and begging started, and the fogged-in Seattle morning at Saint Samuels Seminary Academy had begun.
Many of us, especially the ones who had escaped being the day’s fingerling, didn’t move a muscle as they carted off the unlucky student to the Sisters in the infirmary. But to the ones who still had five weeks of finger healing left before they would recover the use of their pinky finger, the snapping sound caused an involuntary jerk that none of them could control. And I almost giggled out loud when the student in front of me jerked.
I remained thankfully silent, but failed to control my smile. It was actually the first time I had smiled since the farm. Don’t get me wrong—I cried most nights over my parents and Max, but at nine years old… I think I was nine. I already told you the eternities take a toll on the best angel’s memory. But I’ll never forget the crack to the backs of my legs from that PI’s rattan cane and being dragged to the front of the formation and then shackled to the foot of the pulpit.
I remember thinking—I had seen enough bloody backs to know what was coming—can I handle it? I began to cry and then I did what everyone did, I begged, “No! Please, please, I didn’t do anything. I was—I was still. I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything!”
“And how,” Father Dominic’s voice roared down from the top of the huge wooden pulpit, “did you know to do that?”
Then I got as silent as the rest of the formation of students. A telltale sign of guilt at an accusation if there ever was one. At least that was how Dominic proceeded from there. I was guilty of something. I don’t think he cared what that might be or even if I actually was. It was my turn.
A couple of big PI’s stripped off my jacket and then my shirt and I could feel the cold Seattle mist. And it raised goosebumps all over my shoulders and back. Then two more PI’s put me in the leather cuffs about six feet up from the base of the pulpit.
Up close, everything seemed more real. From my position in the formation, I never got a close-up look at the details of a daily whippings before. I just escaped inside my mind. But being up there… I could smell the shellac on the pulpit and taste the misty rain as it flowed down from my head and into my mouth. And the blood… I knew that smell well enough.
One of the PI’s reached out and put a stick in front of my mouth.
What did she say? I thought. I should have paid closer attention!
The PI shoved the stick at my lips like you’d put a bit in a reluctant horse’s mouth. And I clenched my teeth.
He leaned into my ear and whispered. It wasn’t angry, and the calmness of his words comforted me a little. “Put it in your mouth, boy,” he said. “You’ll need your teeth when it’s over.”
I could taste the pine pitch on the stick, and the wood was soft when I bit down. I was on my tiptoes now, barely able to keep the pulling pressure of the cuffs off my wrists.
I couldn’t see behind me, but the gasps from the students in the front row—What the front must be like, I thought—told me that something was back there that they had never seen before.
And standing there half-naked, wet, cold, and scared, without a clue of what was about to happen to me, was the very moment I realized the power of fear. There is no more powerful emotion.
I pulled at the cuffs and I tried to kick at the pulpit, but I was anchored.
“What brother Benito is thinking right now,” Father Dominic’s voice was rarely interrupted or replaced by any other, “is most likely ‘Why me? Why not some other student or Candidate?’ Surely, among a thousand companions fate could have chosen someone else to endure today.” He liked to pause to let his words sink in—stir around and fester the fear in all of our minds. “Truly, for nine hundred and ninety-nine days, it is possible that any one of you could have been chosen—been touched by the hand of fate, felt the breath of God—so that you might prove yourself and forge your faith … in suffering.”
There were no beatings for the gasps behind me, and then there were no more gasps, just silence. And then I could smell it.
Father Dominic spoke again. “However, the breath of life touches us all,” he said. “And through suffering we learn to listen to what God is saying and try to understand God’s message. What is required of us … to endure for our sins. For there is no one on Earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And all must be cleansed of their sins before they may be accepted into Heaven.”
Then things slowed down and I looked up into the grey mist above the lights of the courtyard and felt the cold rain on my face.
The last words that the father spoke were muffled. I heard them all, but the ones that I realized were part of Barbara’s warning… I whimpered every time I heard the word “fire.”
“Most of you here,” Dominic said, “could only hope to endure as brother Benito can … as he has. Most of you shall only be sanctified by the watery resolution of your blood.”
I looked up at him. There was nothing but indifference in his eyes. A blind belief that what he was doing was for my own good—a blind righteousness of purpose. What I would come to know as the true essence of faith.
“But the Word of God tells us,” he said, “that all who are able to pass through fire … shall be purified by it.”
— CLXXIII —
THE TWO PROTECTION agents that billy-clubbed me outside the Mike cut my feet free first, kneeling down on the cold concrete interrogation cell floor in front of me to do it. They’ll learn not to do that soon enough. Once my second legs are free, I teach them.
And I stand straight up and spin and smash the legs of the chair into the first PA’s helmet and he goes rolling.
“Aw, Christ,” the PAIC at the edge of the room shouts, “I told you about that shit.” But he doesn’t move to intervene.
The second agent tries to point his MP7 submachine gun at me, but I catch the barrel with the legs and supports of the chair, twist it hard, and then the squatty little rifle jerks out of his hands and clacks across the floor.
“I told you about that, too,” the PAIC says.
I squat, spin, and sweep the second agent’s legs out from under him and he flips and lands on his face in a crunch and a wheeze, and then I roll on top of him—knee on the back of his neck just in case. A quick scrape of the tape across one of his sharp boot lace lugs and one of my hands is free. I grab his open knife out of his limp hand, slice my other hand loose and drop the knife. I don’t need it—I’m not killing anyone.
The first agent’s back up. I can feel the PAIC watching, calculating, letting me wear myself down on his followers, so I jump up and kick the first agent in the side with the tip of my shoe—CRACK! And now he’s moaning at the lightning spiking though his broken third rib every time he tries to take a breath.
Gotta get back to the Mike, get the molasses, heal the ang—
My legs are swept out from under me and I’m spinning in mid-air. I never even saw him move at me. And now my arrogance has gotten the best of me.
“Now,
ya see,” the PAIC says, moving a safe distance away as I jump at the waist, push with my hands and snap myself back to my feet, “that’s the trouble with all of you priests. So focused on the future that you forget to enjoy the present moment. Here and now, father. Didn’t they teach you that?”
And he comes at me again—a flash of raging red energy in front of my face—but I deflect his hand, grab his wrist and push hard on the pressure point. And his fingers spring open and I—a blinding white light shoots through my blurred vision and I grab for the thumb that’s pressing into the back of my jaw, just under my earlobe.
He lets go and backs away before I can get hold of it. “What’s with you priests and that fucking finger breaking?” he says. “It’s just sadistic, if you ask me. What, you don’t like fingers? They make you eat with your feet over there? Or maybe it’s so you can’t go finger-fucking all your little boyfriends at night.”
I can feel the anger starting to force its way through my own chi, and I look at my hand. My blue hue is turning slightly purple as the rage begins to crawl its way up my arm.
“Oh,” he says, “you didn’t like that, did you? What’s the matter, priest, somebody try to give you the angel-ass?” He walks sideways around the edge of the room with his head turned toward me, waiting for me to make a mistake. “Maybe your father forgot to hold back that third finger?”
He’s a little surprised when I speak—we are all trained for silence until escape … or death frees our soul. My chi begins to turn back to its bluish hue. “Why is it,” I say, “that every Protection agent I’ve ever met, is always so focused on ass?” Now I move with him, mirroring his pace around the edge of this concrete cell.
Interrogation room, I think. I’ve seen them before, but only from that observation room behind the one-way glass he’s passing in front of right now. I can’t feel who’s on the other side. “Kicking ass, beating ass, busting ass,” I say to him. “I mean, your med coverage, agent—surely State therapy could cure you of that … fixation.” I pause and watch his red glow brighter. “Unless, of course, you don’t want it cured. Well, then I guess—”
He rushes across the room at me—fists first then knife hands and then elbows. I deflect them as fast as he throws them, and he’s throwing them surprisingly fast. And another thought pops into my head. This one is a Colonel-ism. You’re poking the beehive, Benito. I can almost hear his curt voice. Careful you don’t get stung.
And I take an elbow to the neck and I get fuzzy for a second and I lose track of him. And then he’s punching his thumb into my ribs. I bend with each one, lessening but not completely relieving the pain that follows.
I spin away from him and he spins, too and I kick and he brings up a knee to deflect my leg. Then I rabbit-punch him about six or seven times in rapid succession, up and down his left arm, and then I grab his left nipple and I pinch down like a vise.
His right arm reaches across his body to pull my hand off and that’s exactly what I wanted.
I spin to his right side, lift up his elbow and ram my fist up under his armpit and the nerve center there numbs his right side and then two knife-hand chops—maybe it’s three—to the different sides of his neck and he buckles. I catch him and lower him to the floor. I’m not killing him—he’s just a messenger boy.
I straighten myself, stretch my neck and shoulders a bit, popping them back to where they started. Then I face the one-way glass along the far side of the cell and—both of my forearms in the shape of the cross in front of me and my hands flat and open—I let them know that I’m no longer a threat. I won’t be the one who turns this to killing, anyway. If they want this to go to their thirst for blood, I’ll drink, but I won’t lead them to it.
I bow a little and then turn toward the door, hoping that it is unlocked. Locked inside this cell, I’m little threat to anyone. I pause and wait.
But they’re not trying to kill me. The Clergy and Protection have an “understanding” about that. But I have broken the rules—curfew and such. The loudspeaker in the room squawks a little. “Your shirt and glasses are just outside the door,” the voice says. And there’s something familiar about it. “And your flask, father.”
I step toward the door.
“One thing,” the voice says. And I stop mid-stride. Of course, I think. They aren’t letting me out of here without getting something. “Why did you let them live?”
I turn around and face the glass. Chi is a wonderful and useful weapon, but it can’t see through ballistic lexan—I have no idea who’s behind the barrier. But I glance down at the unconscious bodies lying on the floor, and then I look back at the glass and I lie to whoever’s hiding in there anyway. “All the days ordained for them were written in God’s book”—I motion my hands around the floor and then at the glass—“before they or I ever came to be. This day, the heavens and the Earth were called as witnesses against us and we were all spared. Life and death are set before us each day—blessing and curse for us to choose.” And then I give them as much warning as I’m going to—I have to get back to my dead angel. “I pray that you choose life, so that in the future, your children may be born … and have lived.”
It’s an eerie pause that makes me wonder if the violence in this room is over. Then I hear the electronic lock on the door behind me click and the bolts unlock. I relax a little—it will be good to put my shirt back on. I don’t like anyone looking at my scars.
No one dies today, I think. That will come for us all soon enough.
— CLXXIV —
IRONICALLY SHAX WAS the most disgusted of all the dark and light angels who listened as Lucifer outlined his plan to save the eternities. The seeds of the plot would, literally and figuratively, take eternities to bear fruit. Loss and liberation would intertwine until none who witnessed only a single tree in Lucifer’s dark forest of deception would ever be able to tell if that forest was burning … or blossoming.
“Aax,” Shax turned to his friend and said, “I believe I’ll fancy a drink before this one, I will. Several more whence it’s over.” And he was more than a little nervous, but completely serious when he turned to the group as a whole and said, “What do you think of me pig now? Infected or not, I’ll not—”
“I’m in,” Lilith interrupted. “Miserable monkeys be damned to Hell.”
Zepar looked at her and clucked a little. “Really?” he said. “Do you know what those things smell like?”
Lilith scowled at him. “I of any angel, am more than aware.”
“Right then,” said Zepar. Then he looked at Lucifer. “Lilith volunteers to take mine”—he looked at the rest of them—“and I’ll assist any angel in any manner I’m able. Other than copulation, of course. And … well, it all works out for the better.”
“You will see this devilish duty done,” Lucifer said to him, “or join Utipa in her end.” Once he had shared the plot, Lucifer could ill afford to have its ending spoiled.
Zepar’s head jerked involuntarily to one side, and then he touched his littlest finger to his lips. “Hmm, let me think about that for a moment.”
“Sodom and Gomorrah,” muttered Aax, “you’re serious.” It wasn’t a question—he knew his ruler’s wing-language well enough by then.
“It is the singular solution,” Lucifer replied. “Deception must wrap its wings inside themselves. Nothing else will conceal the snake before venomous poison is delivered.”
Dorak was a midlevel manager of Hell’s misery that longed for nothing more than to be a dictator’s deity. His smooth looks and silky swagger pulled him out of every ounce of trouble he had ever caused trying to accomplish just that. “An interesting way to describe it, your eminence,” he said to Lucifer, “considering.” And then he smiled to himself, thoroughly excited at the entire prospect of his part in the plan. The fact that Lucifer would entrust it to him—
“Oh, of what do you wail?” Lucifia said to Dorak. “Your insidious snake cares not where its precious poison is pumped.” She frowned at Dorak and then smi
rked. “You … hydra-humping hound of Hell!” She had enjoyed a time or two with the seductive Satan wannabe, but she had lost the taste for the dirty dog’s dealings.
“Listen,” Dorak said, “if any angel feels … trepidation at task of titillation”—he looked at Zepar—“mend your mouth to my ear. I shall sacrifice self and pump poison on angel’s behalf.” Then he winked at Lucifia. “As fair angel, Lucifia, can attest.”
Lucifia rolled her eyes, and then she looked at her grandfather, Lucifer. “Brighter angel you cannot deliver to godly task, grandfather?” she clucked a little when she asked him. “We may lose track of feathered friend, frolicking in his own filth—annoying angel lost in the ass of a dark alleyway.”
Dorak cawed and clucked back. “It shall be fine, fair angel, juuuust fine,” he said. “And promise is made—I shall not … expend myself completely in any ass … save dark angel’s own. My loyalty lies with love of your pent-up loins.”
“Lucifer’s balls!” Lucifia shouted at him. She extended one of her wings and shoved Dorak away from her side. “I care not where your snake slithers its slime, dog! You are free to lather whatever limping leg it wraps itself around, save angel’s own ass.”
Shax leaned into the circle, looked across at Uzza, Lucifia, and Dorak, and then he whispered loudly at his friend, “Aax, I think I just rooted the fellow what’s been pumping me pig.”
Aax whispered back, with equal … inconspicuousness, “Only fit for bacon after his snake.”
And they both chuckled out loud and their wings shook.
Then Aax leaned next to him, toward Raum. Though Heaven’s own halo shined for the hard archangel, Raum, the barriers between the two Heavens were breaking down. And that was exactly Lucifer’s goal for the gathering. “What say you, godling?” Aax asked him. “I wager you’ve taken the trip more than me … to different deed and purpose, as well.” He clucked and chuckled.
Raum’s arms were rarely uncrossed and he tightened his grip on his forearms as he spoke. “Man-monkeys,” he said, raising his voice and then pausing to allow the flock to calm itself. And when he did, the rest of the circle of conspirators stilled their wailing and steeled their wings.
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