She jerks her arm back. “What’s it today then?” she says. “Draggin’ on me dickbeaters, are ya? Pullin’ at me pistol? Supposed to be other way round, it is.” She laughs a little, then gets serious again.
“Once again,” I say, “I’m very sorry for your troubles. I hope that will compensate—”
“There was three of them,” she says. She stares back at me—never looks down. She’s a merchant first, for certain. She wouldn’t have lasted this long at the Mike if she wasn’t.
“Right you are,” I say, and I reach into my little purse and slip out five more credit coins. “Will this cover it?”
She’s still staring into my eyes, well aware that I’m a priest by now. She knows what that means. “And me bullet?” she says, dead-faced serious.
I glance at our feet, but I know the little .22 caliber rimfire cartridge is already gone. Like I told you—bullets and beans are like gold to the grumbling guts of a beaten-down citizen. Come to think of it, that third “B” wouldn’t be lying around in the street long either. But a vile full of Judgment would last longer than ammunition on the ground. When I look back up at her face—we’re inches apart—I smile and say, “Forgive me.” And I place another credit in her hand. “Of course.”
She smiles, freshly unconcerned about her stolen goods, because she knows they aren’t the point. What is the point is survival, and sixteen credits buys a month of that. Regardless, I’ve succeeded at my point, which is to make the girls who stole her goods a long-lost memory. I’m almost finished with that.
But no veteran shopkeep will miss a chance to upsell an already buying customer. “Can’t find no one to fuck then, father?” she asks, knowing full well that this far into the market if I was here for that, the exchange would have long since passed and I would be gone—back to my church. “Or maybe you just ain’t found someone with the proper … experience? Me shop’s moments away and it’s about time for me midday snack.” She eyes me up and down, gauging my willingness to accept her offer. “Or maybe you’re holding out for love? That’ll get ya killed right enough, father. Sure as the Devil’s me grandfather, it will.”
I smile. I just can’t help it—I love the way she speaks. I glance back up the street—the three girls are safely vanished. And I look back at the shopkeep woman, busy brushing her hair from her face, turning it to a sales brochure. Now she’s smiling back at me, and she has moved in closer to me as well. I can feel her hand moving on my waist. “A friend loves at all times,” I say to her, trying to politely turn down her offer.
She’s got both hands on my waist now. “And a brother is born for adversity,” she says, “but that don’t bathe me bonnet with bunny rabbits, now does it, father?”
It’s the learned ladies that tempt me the most and this one’s no stranger to the Word.
“Sadly, lovely lady,” I say, “I’m pressed for time. On a different day…” The hazel in her eyes seems to swirl a beautiful brown and green, like little planets of impending pleasure. She’s right though, my heart lies … elsewhere. Still, an ounce of politeness buys a pound of prevention of pain and plunder in her world. “I wonder if you would be so kind as to help me find a friend?”
She backs up a little. And now she knows there’s more credits to be had. Shopkeeps are never ones to attach themselves to what they can sell, they’re mostly focused on the actual exchange of coin for services rendered, so to speak. She looks up the street—still bitter about her boosted boots, I imagine—no one likes to be taken for a fool. She sniffs a little and then looks back at me, all business now. “Well, since you’ve helped me with me credit-cocking cunts,” she says, “state your business, father, so I can get to me fucking lunch.”
“I’m looking for a man,” I say it without thinking.
She rolls her eyes. “It’s a wonder,” she says. “You priests and your little sodomite sons. I shoulda known better, I should.” She turns and points back up the street toward the entrance. “It’s right back there then. Gates of Gomorrah off the sideway there. Five credits for me trouble and off you go, ya dirty little monster.”
I try not to frown, but answering for the sins of my “brothers” in benevolence and faith is getting tediously annoying to me. And the Clergy’s handling of the “affairs” is far worse than that. “You misunderstand me,” I say, “I’m looking for a friend of mine. He used to go by the name of O’Shannon, but it’s been so long since I’ve—”
The cold look on her face stops me. She doesn’t hesitate—she just gets it all out as fast as she can. “Hundred yards down on your left. Mind the little maggots on the porch. They’ll be wantin’ whatever credits you got left, so protect your purse. Peace be with you, father.”
My eyebrows lift up—I can’t help it.
She cocks her head, gives me a wince and a frown, and then she lifts up her long black skirt and quicksteps her way through the crowd, slipping back into her shop with the determination and focus of a woman on a mission from God.
“And also with you,” I say softly after her, “Sister?” I’m a little concerned that she didn’t wait for payment.
I dump the bloody blade I confiscated from my earlier knife … “exchange,” down the storm drain outside the shopkeep’s front door. Then I walk toward the two young boys pretending to do nothing on either side of it. They’re small, but I can tell they’re both hard. The tattoo on the left one’s neck tells me that he knows how to kill.
The one on the right steps in front of me and holds up his hand. “Whoa,” he says, frowning at me, “and where do you think you’re going, godling?”
It’s a ware-watchman’s job to keep anyone who might cause trouble out of his master’s shop. Us black-clad Clergy look like trouble to anyone who knows how to avoid it.
“Nothing but trouble in there for you,” He says. He looks behind him at his partner in pain, and then back at me. “I wouldn’t want you to get your glasses broke. How’s about you just give them to me for safekeeping?”
My glasses aren’t worth much on the market, but he wouldn’t be any kind of watchman if he didn’t shake down a few passersby to maintain respect. I look down at him—he’s only a little shorter than I am—and I pull off my glasses. I stare straight into the beet-red chi of his eyes—one little lion to another. “Your lips talk of trouble, brother, while your mind devises violence,” I say to him. Then I look over his head at his partner. He’s the dangerous one. “Yet our souls only struggle for peace, my friends. I’ll not give your master any trouble today. No cause for concern at all.” I smile at them. Sometimes the right facial expression is all the advantage you need. My Shandian mind steels itself for combat. “In fact, I’m here to help him get rich.” The right words can help as well.
The one still at the door has dead eyes. His lips barely move when he speaks. “I look like a slave to you, priest?” he says. “Ain’t got no master, but me.”
“I meant no disrespect,” I say to him. I can feel the one in front of me moving his hand to his pocket. If I were one of my brothers—Heaven help these two if I were—I would’ve kept the knife. I reach to put my glasses in my pocket—no need to break them up for this.
The one in front of me grabs them from my hand. “And how rich would you be making him, then?” he asks.
Before I realize what he’s doing, I set my will on his throat—focus on the artery pumping beneath the skin on his neck. I can burst it in two blows. But like I said, there’s already plenty of ways to die at the Mike. Today I’m hesitant to add to the list … at least not yet. My side’s still got a little twinge in it from fighting the agents at the Fifty, anyway. I’ll wait to see what these two offer up for resistance.
A bellowing laugh in the doorway of the shop startles the one in front of me just enough, and I grab his hand and then I press my thumb hard into the point on the outside of his wrist and his hand pops open and I grab my glasses before he even feels the pain.
He winces and grabs at his hand with the other, but he only has a sec
ond to worry about his wrist.
“Hey then, ya miserable little demon,” the man in the doorway yells at him, “get clear of that blind bastard before he rips out your throat!” And he rumbles out like a rhino and grabs the one in front of me with his huge hairy hand and hurls the misguided miscreant backward toward his partner in … missed opportunities at crime.
And they both go crashing against the outside of the big man’s shop. When they pick themselves up, there’s a little more fire in the second one’s dead eyes.
The man ignores them. Strangely, I like that about him. From what I remember, my friend’s an enigma. He looks like a mountain that just ate a hill, and his long ragged ponytail is only out-blacked by the absolute bear of a mustache that appears to have eaten his upper lip.
However, despite his less than angelic appearance, he’s never been anything but helpful to me. And for a man who deals in the things he does, a representative of the Clergy is not where his affections should lie.
“I’ll be thanking you, then,” he says to me.
I give him a puzzled look, but I know what he is saying.
He motions his thumb over his shoulder at his two watchmen. “For not murderin’ me munchkins.”
He’s also never been anything but sincere. Offering thanks or smashing someone’s skull who took a little too much liberty with one of his women… When he says something, that’s the truth. I still feel for his women, but there’s worse men to work for down here.
He looks over at his watchmen. “Little pee-pissing purgies, ya know. ’Bout making me half mental, they are. Promised their mothers I’d watch after them. Me and me pretty promises, eh.” He looks back at me. “Ah, where are me manners, mum? Come here you heavenly bastard.” Then he gives me a great big bear hug and I wheeze and wince at the pain until he realizes it, and then he sets me down as softly as a mother puts her baby in a crib. “Whores in Heaven, it’s good to see you above the bench, Benito”—he surveys me up and down like a mother would her son, freshly home from State Conditioning Academy—“but blast, you look as skinny as me member in the mornin’. They got you on that fasting filth now, as well?”
He’s right—the years, not to mention my secrets, have been busy grinding my soul like a pencil sharpener. That’s to say nothing of what the stress has done to my … physical being. I put my glasses back on and look at him with my “lesser” vision. Strangely, I know it’s been a long time, but he doesn’t look any different from the day I met him. I smile at him and make sure his mind’s the same as I remember, too. “I eat no delicacies and no meat nor wine.”
“So Satan won’t be tempting you with tasty treats today, will he?” he says, “Your lack of self-control be buggered, eh?” Then he pauses and waits.
I searched through my memory for the verse. I smirk a little at him. “I only live as I am called to,” I say.
“Me pet pig’s ass, you do!” he says, and then he bellows loudly and slaps me on the back and I stumble a little. He looks back at his watchmen. They’re poised to attack, but staring in disbelief at us both. “Go ahead then, flutter your nuts off me porch and go check me muttons, with ya.”
And the two of them begrudgingly trip themselves off of the wooden steps and into the slippery sludge of the middle of the street in search of my friend’s women. Like a couple of miserable rain-soaked cats gingerly primping their feet up the street, they head for the entrance to the Mike, heads down, occasionally looking back like they want to kill me.
“Make sure Lucinda ain’t shot no one on your way,” he shouts after them, “me pigs is plump enough.”
If I recall it correctly, my friend keeps a veritable sea of swine somewhere. It certainly wouldn’t be hard to hide the smell down here. The purpose of the pigs is the near complete disposal of the empty husks of misspent souls … or anyone else that someone might want disappeared for any reason at all. And misspent or not, the last place I want the final remnants of my flesh and bone on Earth to rest is at the bottom of a pigpen—a tombstone of teeth mixed with pig poop and mud to mark that I was ever alive.
He looks back at me, his big eyes piercing every inch of my clothes to check for weapon bulges. “Greedy for guts as her grandfather, that Lucinda is.”
“Brother Shannon,” I say to him, and if I remember I’m one of the few people that can get away with that, “your servants suffer for wont of a good sermon, I would say.”
“Gomorrah girls,” Shannon grumbles and scoffs back at them. Then he watches the pair until they disappear into the shop that my “lovely” lady just went into. He glances past me and out to the Pacific Ocean. It used to be the most expensive view in the Northwest Quarter. Now, garbage scows and ships full of shit bound for China, slither their way through the slime of the Puget Sound like snakes in a sewer. “Let’s get you out of this cocking cold, then. Miserable wet world you monkeys live in, it is,” he mumbles. He turns around, but then pauses. “You still got your flask then?” he asks in front of him.
I barely touch my pocket—another tell.
He tilts his head up a little and I watch his ponytail almost move on its own. “Empty,” he says. Then he walks toward the door to his shop. “Be mending that for ya quick enough. Got some right hot hellfire hate in me cabinet, I do.”
— CLXXX —
LIFE, THE PROTECTOR of her eternity, was God—one of the Lords Almighty of Creation itself. She paced, deep inside the Throne Chamber of the Protectors. The chamber room was perched like a jewel, high atop the Great Mountain of the Eternities and was the home of every Protector since the first.
Life waxed and waned, wishing only that she would have been crowned so at the very first eternity—the dawn of time when the very first Protector, the great God Eden, had created the Garden and populated it with Man. Were it so, she would not be reaping the crop of the seeds that Eden had so carelessly sown from the mating of Man to that vile and venomous snake. Eden’s children had never worshipped Life quite the way she craved, choosing instead lust and lying with women over bowing on their knees to pay tribute to her.
Life’s Golden Guardians—the gold gilded angels tasked with keeping the peace and tranquility in Heaven—listened to their master just enough to avoid wrath and ruin.
As Life railed at her perceived misfortunes, her huge black orbs—the eyes to her own soul—glowed and white lightning cracked its way through them. Her own windows to the world were tiny universes themselves—tempests of tyranny which, if they had inhabitants as the Garden, would experience nothing but storms for their sins each day. “Had that miserable angel, Lilith, not failed me,” Life screeched and screamed as a great eagle, trapped in a cage of its own making. “One minuscule task! Had I entrusted it to Michael—he has never failed me. Even Lucifer’s arrogance would have proven useful.” She paused only to ponder her own words, neither caring for the opinions of nor wanting participation from her guardians.
The guardians listened to their Protector’s rant with the stoic steel gazes of both servant and, as they had come to know the whip of lightning that Life could wield during one of her “heavenly” tirades, slave. A once noble and benevolent duty, coveted by guardians new and old, “guarding gods” the entire cadre called it, had been reduced to that of hounds on a porch for a devious and demanding master to kick.
Life’s near transparent wings fluttered uncontrollably as she hovered above her chamber’s floor, and her brightness caused both guardians to squint. “Lilith,” she said, “I should strike her name from my book and cast her into the depths of the lake of fire!” Then she screamed and sent bolts of lightning through her chambers—every direction at once.
And the guardians caught fire and exploded and their guts burst throughout the throne room and steel feathers fluttered to the ground and clanked off of the marble and stone floor and then burst into flames.
Life scoffed at the debris as the last bits of it burned to nothing. She would resurrect them soon enough. Right now—“Guards!” she screeched.
; Two more golden guardians burst through the door to Life’s chamber. In another eternity they might have been wide-eyed and looking for the assailant who had just slain their brother and sister guardians. Or possibly been ready to defend their God with their very lives from an assassin’s assault. As it was, they both already understood what had happened, having experienced first hand Life’s wrath for themselves.
Life wasted no time with niceties. “Go find Utipa!” she shouted. “I must know under what rock Lucifer’s two-headed snake has slithered. He grows as restless as I. I can smell it on him at the Judgments. She shall not fail me in this.”
The second guardian hesitated too long.
“What?” Life shouted at him, her black orbs shining and cracking bolts of light through them.
The guardian glanced down at the debris. “And what of—”
“Be gone or be damned!” Life yelled at him. “I shall deal with them.”
And with that, the second guardian hastened out of his God’s chamber … lest he suffer a similar fate.
— CLXXXI —
I WOKE UP to darkness—nothing but the moon shining in on my sleeping mat. The floor of my cell was still cold, I was still a prisoner at Saint Samuels Seminary Academy … and fire and fury still shot through my back. I screamed out at the pain, “Aaaaaah!” When it subsided a little, I sobbed, “God … please forgive me. Please make this pain stop,” I begged. “Whatever I have done to—mother … have mercy on me. Max…”
There was no one. It was actually the first time since the tornado of terrible events took my life from me, that the world had slowed down enough for me to mourn all of my loss. And I slumped down on my stomach on my mat, and then I wailed and cried. It didn’t help the pain.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 69