“Holy mother,” said Barbara. “You have to kill him.”
“I’m not…” I’d fought plenty of PI’s and, as far as my little voice could rationalize, I was going to kill Father D. As far as I knew, he had stomped my face in and sent me into this death dream, but kill him … with an axe?
The big angel reached behind his back, rummaged a little, and then handed me a little flat metal bottle.
It looked like one of the little leather-bound flasks I’d seen some of the PI’s pull out when they thought none of us were looking. The letters “B.O.B.” were inscribed on the metal part at the top. It was just like the one my father gave…? There was just no way I could… “I cannot be led astray by wine.”
“This ain’t wine,” the angel said. “This here mocker’s stronger than that. Little brawler, he is. He’ll save your soul more than once, he will. You’ll find that the one you got ghosted in your cell be gone, you will. This here … is his grandson, it is.”
— CXCIII —
MY FRIEND SHANNON comes back up through the floor of his shop faster than he disappeared. He couldn’t have been gone more than a few seconds.
“Sorry about me timin’, mate,” Shannon says. “Took longer’n lopping of ol’ Lucifer’s tail, it did.” He shakes his head at me and grins a knowing smile. “Your mutton’s a real chatterbox, she is. I can see how she twisted her wool around your william, though. Right seductive sister, that one.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I can see that Shannon’s minus the axe he took with him … and his little pig. “Where’s your…?”
Half of my question is answered when the little potbelly scurries up behind Shannon, snorting and sniffing like he’s gonna attack an ankle or bite someone’s hand.
“There he is then,” Shannon says. “Let’s get to it, eh, Piz. Looks like Benito might be done dallying about.” He looks at me like I had all day to do something and waited until the last hour to get it done. “What ya been doin’ up here, laddie? Choking your chicken? Me watchmen’s damned by now. They’ll be bringing the black at your back, sure enough. Still got your flask?” he asks.
I have no idea why that’s important, but I can’t help touching my pants pocket to feel if it’s there. I frown at him. “Yes.” My Shandian mind is done trying to understand all of what Shannon’s saying. Protection’s in the Mike, sweltering sin down on whatever innocence it has left. I know they’re here to finish what they started this morning at the Fifty. They followed you, idiot. Every once in a while, the little voice inside my head sounds just like Barbara. Sometimes I miss… I look out the window again.
Shannon’s watchman, Omia, has turned to a raging hellfire angel … or demon, I’m not sure which. It’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference. He spins and hundreds of bright red streaks fly up the street. They cut through the Protection agents in their way, and limbs fall and other bodies decapitate, and then the screaming starts.
A fresh squad of black-booted, dark-clad killers replaces the gutted ones on the ground. The agents who still have their heads scream in agony, crawling and grabbing for lost limbs—and a hailstorm of bullets flash glowing purple-black streams of hate at Omia. The streaks cut one of his wings off and he crumples to the side. Then he gets hit in the guts and I’m reminded that it’s not the only pile of angelic intestines I’ve seen today. You gotta get back to him or all this—
I know! I’m not even sure if it’s me, my Shandian mind, or my inner voice of reasonless rage that yells it.
One of the agents—a huge burly mass of black—looks like he’s carrying an axe. Not normal, my inner voice says. It’s taking turns shouting at me hysterically while my Shandian mind barks orders. Get away from the window, idiot! But I just have to watch.
The black mass of man swings the huge blade like a toy hammer, and Omia’s head flies off and I see blood spray up from the bloody stump that used to be his neck. The spurting is backlit by headlights coming down the street behind the big behemoth with the axe. Then Omia bursts into flames and explodes into burning chunks of meat.
Backlit by the floodlights on Protection’s big black Mobile Assault Resistance Response vehicle, the entire street looks like black shadows, running, raging, and ruining the marketplace.
“They brought a MARR,” I raise my voice at Shannon.
A long time ago, citizens protested that Protection was becoming too militarized. They were worried about one of the most powerful militaries in the world being turned on its own citizens. Now, there isn’t any difference between the military and the mayhem of the national police—Protection’s responsible for them both anyway. I guess the citizens were right. It hardly matters now—guns gone and buried in heaps of hindsight and hate. And now a Protection tank is rolling up the street.
“Lovely,” says Shannon.
“And one of them’s got your axe,” I say.
“That’d be Uzz—who’s got me axe?” Shannon says. He’s next to me faster than he went down and came back up the steps to whatever dungeon’s underneath his shop, and he looks out the window with me.
Bullets blast through the window, spraying us both with glass, and one grazes across my neck and it burns like acid. And I’m falling backward—Shannon is too—and my mind shouts, Stop watching and start fighting!
Shannon’s lying on his back next to me on the floor. He stares up at the ceiling and says, “Guess you’ll be fightin’ two feathered followers in one day. Pity really.”
“Are you injured?” I ask him.
“Just me pride,” he says.
I lie next to him and stare up at the slow motion of bullets streaking above us and flashing lights and sparks, as Shannon’s shop becomes a Freedom Fourth fireworks display. “A mortal sin, Pride,” I say. My voice is muffled and far away.
“It’s a good gander I ain’t mortal then, isn’t it?” he says, “Bloody shame, it is?”
“What?”
“I only had one axe.”
“Where is it?” My mind’s telling me I already know the answer.
“Gave it to me mate,” he says. “Hope the bastard has the good sense to use it.”
— CXCIV —
I TUCKED THE little flask that the big angel gave me into my pocket. Shannon—Shax? I thought. Then I grabbed Barbara’s hand. I gripped down hard on the angel’s other gift. The axe was heavy and backed up with hate. I could feel the same emotions swelling up inside me—I was going to fill that dam of hate to overflowing.
I knew what I had to do. The two messengers told me as much. At least Father D was right about one thing: Heaven spoke with messengers, because God had neither time nor inclination to speak directly to his children.
“Come on,” I said to Barbara, and then I started tugging her back up the steps.
“We’re going back?” she said, pulling back against me. “They’re still up there. Probably waiting in the hall to—no!” She continued to tug back against me. “They’ll catch us, Benito!”
“That’s not where we’re going,” I said. I knew where we had to get back to, and as soon as my dream or hallucination or vision ended, that would be exactly where we would end up. Barbara wouldn’t like it. If my face got smashed in again … I wouldn’t either.
— CXCV —
BULLETS RAIN IN the window, streaking through what’s left of Shannon’s shop. The hailstorm tears apart trinkets and shatters glass and crashes through clocks, stopping time for the little ticking soldiers whose only job is to mark its passing.
“Right then,” Shannon says, “hope they don’t spill any of your precious molasses. Only got so much of it, I do.”
All this for some syrup? My little inner voice says. You’re more idiot than she says.
I look for a clock that didn’t get killed. I find one—second hand still calmly ticking away, like his brothers didn’t just get blown to bits of glass. Eleven o’clock? I frown at my own stupidity for drinking moonshine with Shannon when I have more important tasks to attend to
. One hour left, Benito. Get to it!
“I’ll punch a little Protection path for ya, I will,” says Shannon. “But you’ll be havin’ to end Hell’s hate with your own. That be the Word.”
And he’s up before I can ask him what in “Hell’s hate” he means. Whatever it is, I’m sure that the only way back to my church is through the big black Protection beast, busy lopping off heads out on the street. “Peace be with you,” I say it again as he bursts out the front door.
The last thing I hear him say is, “Ain’t no time for peace, ya bastard. This here’s the war!”
I’m up and out of the shop after him before my Shandian mind can reprimand me for not going first … or my inner voice of panic can beg me not to go at all.
As soon as I come out the front door, I’m hit and fire burns across the outside of my ribcage. I put my hand on it. By the “grace” of God I’m just grazed. I wince hard, try to concentrate, and then I run for a deep dark doorway about fifty yards up the street.
I glance at Shannon as I run. He’s busy doing what he promised to, and I watch him sprout wings and turn to a huge angel with even bigger wings. And I’m running and my Shandian mind yells at me, He’s the same one from the tunnel!
That was real?
That was so long ago, and I’ve blocked out most of it. They’re painful and terrifying memories of murder and misery, buried deep inside my head, like underground guns waiting for me to be reminded why I needed them in the first place. And that reason and reminder is busy beating and blasting its way through its own citizens—the State looking for someone that it deems to be threat-worthy.
I watch Shannon spin, and his wings cup around him and streaks of red and orange fly up the street. They light up the gray and black of what is probably the Mike’s final night, this one anyway. Because after Protection is done blasting and blowing up everything in sight, they’ll more than likely bulldoze it under so no one will ever know it existed in the first place. State… I have to admit, the Clergy uses the same strategy to cover up things it doesn’t want to have known or to answer for. No need accounting for things that never existed, is—Focus! My inner voice is busy trying to get all three of us killed.
I make it to the doorway through the continued screams of the Mike’s citizens turned suffering subjects. Their oppressors… Dying Protection agents are busy wailing from the stings of what will most likely be their future. Sinning souls shred in the blender of… For some reason my Shandian mind is telling me that Shannon is firing ballistic feathers up the street. Now it knows—
A streak of lightning flashes through my head. My glasses fly off my face and I spin and go to the ground, bouncing off the steps and rolling into the doorway that I was headed for. I lie there sideways with my head slumped to the ground.
My vision of the street turns to a fiery red raging glow of hate and flames and fury and damnation. The Protection agents are black shadows against it, and Shannon has turned to a glowing red dragon.
In Shandian training, we were taught that Man does not see what is right in front of him. He has to be taught to remove the cloak of darkness and deceit that constantly covers and clouds his perception of the world as he wants it to be. But the fog of the Word is thicker than the Seattle mist and only through fire can a warrior’s vision—his Shandian mind—reveal the universe as it truly is. The truth is fire, hidden in plain sight, surrounded by the misty gray of rationalization and justification. Flames reveal its true form, its “truth.” There is no harder lesson to learn.
I lie on my side and watch as Shannon, turned dragon-angel-demon, sends fire and fury up the street. And then the “citizens” of the Mike burst from shops and alleyways and windows and doorways, and some of them even rise out of the middle of the street, crawling up through manhole covers. I shudder to imagine where they lead. And projectiles begin flying in the other direction, and the tide of terror at the Mike has shifted!
Now, Protection is being taught that the ocean of citizens it is certain it owns… The sea has no master.
Something … is missing. My little inner voice stares at the red and rage of the main street of the Mike, trying to tell me something as I lie in the sticky glue of a terrible lapse in my memory. Then—Watch out! my Shandian mind shouts. Roll sideways!
The angry blade of the axe chops straight down at my head and I barely comply with the order before the axe splits the steps in half, splintering and sparking the boards that my head was just using for a pillow.
Move, idiot! I’m not sure if that’s my inner voice, my Shandian reflexes, or her, but the message is delivered and I end my sideways roll and snap to my feet and stare at him.
The big black Protection agent has turned into a raging red demon with twisted horns and steaming nostrils, and Heaven and Hell have finally found their way to my hallucinations. Miserable messengers are everywhere.
What’s the message?
I barely have time to wonder before the axe is swinging at my neck and I jump sideways and the big blade cuts clean through one of the porch pillars, sparking and splintering the big timber like a toothpick. The awning it was holding up sags, and big wood splinters streak into my ribs and I fall backward.
I’m up a little slower this time and the beast is on me. His hoof presses into my chest. His voice is deep and devilish, his eyes glow black and his mouth spouts a horrible smell when he speaks, “Ah, stubborn child, you unwittingly carry out a plan not mine, and make an alliance not of my spirit that it may add sin to your sins. I shall return you to your shame and humiliation.” And he raises the huge axe above his horns. He looks all around him and when he speaks again, it’s at the entire Mike, “You will all come to shame through this plan—you cannot profit by it. Its plot shall bring only disgrace.”
I pull one of the long wood splinters out of my side—more long stick than annoying splinter—wincing through the searing sting of slivers it leaves behind. And I grip my fist around it. Then I notice something—the beast has only three fingers on the hand gripping its axe. “The three woe’s,” I mutter.
It’s a short-lived revelation.
The snorting bull swings its axe down at my head, and at the same time I stab the beast in the leg, burying the near-foot-long spike of timber from my ribs, into and through its calf! And I squint my eyes shut as blinding pain shoots through the right side of my chest from my effort.
— CXCVI —
WHEN I OPENED my eyes back up I was lying in the courtyard of the Saint Samuels Seminary Academy courtyard, staring up at the black of the Seattle fog, misting down on my glasses and face. My right cheek screamed pain … and the huge cloven hoof of a lion-bear beast hovered above me—Father D turned demonic devil, Aax, preparing to stomp my brains out … again.
“Very well,” he said, “let it join your right, priest.” And he smashed his hoof down at me.
I rolled to the side as his hoof pummeled the rock floor where my head was not seconds before. And rock chunks sprayed across the court and I watched them bounce to a backdrop of Shandian warrior students doing battle with their Priest Instructors.
Where once a huge formation of students—a symbol of the cross of the Crucifixion—had stood motionless each morning, enduring misery after mutilation, now fought only a few of those as survivors, enduring and inflicting blood and mayhem and revenge. Broken bodies were everywhere and both sides were losing badly.
I sprang to my feet. “Your lips are a snare to your soul, demon!” I said. And then I felt something in my right hand, heavy and cold.
The beast hesitated. “Where did you get…?” it said. And then he morphed back to more Father D than demon. “He gave you his … the Tiny Swine,” he muttered.
I looked at the little axe and spun it, turning it slowly, over and over in my hand. “So that’s your name,” I said at the little double-bladed demon killer. Because that was what I was about to do with it.
And Father D’s face looked like a friend had just pulled a huge knife out of his back and s
howed him his own blood on its blade. Just like it. “In all the eternities … he never even let me … that’s just not … possible,” he said. “Traitorous bastard! I’ll cut off his head and eat his eyes for—”
“It’s funny…” I said to the demon, and then I spun and swung the little axe, slicing it through the air in a huge sweeping circle of sin for sin.
And the blade of the axe cut through Father D’s neck like hate through a hot heart. And his head flew up into the air and flipped over and over in slow motion, turning back to the huge head of a lion-bear liar from Hell as it fell to the cold stone ground and rolled across the courtyard.
When the beast’s big head came to rest, I stood hard, one hand on the ground, knees bent and straining like the limbs on the tree of my faltering faith, and the little Tiny Swine—my angel friend’s black-bladed axe—extended high above my head. “…that’s the same thing he said about you.”
The demon’s head burst into flames and its body exploded into chunks and melted like lava, burning down to black crusted rocks.
As soon as Father D fell—once the demon Aax was no more—every Priest Instructor left in the courtyard stopped fighting and stood confused and then horrified at the bodies that lie dead. To them, freshly woken from whatever dark spell that Father D held over them, the Seminary looked littered with sin, and the faith of the Clergy was stained red with blood.
But student Candidates kept beating them, their pent-up anguish and anger unleashed and quenching their thirst for vengeance toward their oppressors. And I let them.
For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown none. That was the Word of the God we had been brutally bound to serve. Who was I to challenge it?
“Benito,” I heard Barbara’s voice.
I walked over, dropped the axe, and then pulled the locks on the stocks around Barbara’s head and neck free. I raised the upper half of the crossbeam on the cross and she fell to the cold ground of the courtyard.
The back of Barbara’s habit was torn off and lying on the ground a few feet away. I crawled over to it, afraid to look at what I would find when I brought it back to cover up the bloody whip wounds on her back. I felt into my own wounds and winced at them, my Shandian mind finally slowing down long enough for my inner voice to stop holding its breath. You could’ve been killed!
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 77