Sam returned the nod. “Yes. I know exactly what you mean.”
“So, do you know about September 11th, son?” Sam nodded; even as young as he was at the time, he could remember where he had been when the planes had crashed into the Twin Towers; he had been riding his bike outside of his home when his mother had called him in to watch the news.
“Happened right after that. I was sitting in this very chair, remote control in my hand, flipping through channels; I just couldn’t believe it. I bet a lot of people felt like that back then, you know, thought that we were invincible, that something like that only happened to ‘other countries.’” Sam acknowledged this comment, motioning with his hand for Kurtis to continue.
“Anyway, I was watching the TV, then, suddenly, I could see them. All over, flying to and fro, in and out of the flames, over the crowds; angels, everywhere.”
He paused, laughed to himself. “They didn’t look anything like I thought they would.” He spread his hands wide, holding them in front of him. “Not like people with wings, not exactly; they were more like…luminous, undefined…they didn’t exactly have a shape, or maybe it was just that I couldn’t figure out what shape they were. I don’t know.
“So there they are, and I’m so stunned, right, that at first I don’t hear it. Then I realize that the sound of the broadcast was being drowned out by something. Took me a second, then I realized it was music…but it wasn’t. Music has this quality, you know? Rhythm, meter, anything that a qualified music student in college could tell you about and that I don’t even know the words for…but language has a different rhythm. This was language…but it was language that WAS music.”
Sam sat forward like a shot. “You mean…the angels speak in songs? Their language is musical?”
Kurtis wobbled his right hand back-and-forth in a “so-so” gesture. “I don’t think it’s so much that they speak in songs. It’s more that…this is how our universe interprets their speech. They aren’t really part of us, you know; God made them separate, made them different from us. Before He made the universe itself, before He made matter, time, space, all that, however that worked, there were the angels, doing His will.”
“That’s pretty clear in the classical literature.” Sam rubbed his hands together, took another sip of his brew. “And I can definitely buy that, given the little bit I already know about them. How did you figure it out, though? Your book said…”
“Ah, the book.” Kurtis laughed and upended the bottle, polishing off his beer. “That book was written while I was high on caffeine and stimulants, staying up for days on end trying to make sense of it. See, by chance, I had my TiVo going and I caught the broadcast. I showed it to family, friends, wanting to see if they saw it, they heard it. Never. Nothing.
“After I figured that out, I went to work. Well, okay, let’s be fair.” He pointed a finger to his head, tapped his temple. “I first spent a few months talking to psychiatrists, soul-searching, trying to figure out if I had lost it, gone crazy, or what. Eventually I had to decide that I wasn’t crazy.”
“Why?” Sam was rapt. This exact question had occurred to him, many times, and he wanted to know how this man who had no concrete proof other than his own senses had handled it.
“Because I had seen it, heard it. If I was crazy, I’d have to start doubting everything else that I had seen or heard. I wasn’t prepared to do that, so I decided that, for the sake of argument, I wasn’t crazy. Doing that let me move on with life, let me try to figure things out.” He sighed and sat back in his chair.
“I ran that tape over and over, trying to isolate the notes. Learned a fair bit about music while I did so, Sam, including exactly how much I don’t know; there’s nothing like an obsession to help you learn things, am I right?” Sam laughed, and stretched a bit; the clock read 4:50; he had been here over two hours already, and the sun was shifting outside.
“The language is just that, Sam. It’s a language, and it expresses concepts, just like ours, just like every other language on Earth. Anyone who heard it and had a mind for patterns could figure it out. Wasn’t easy, though; like breaking through government computer security…every day. For five years.
“Their language is dense, high context. A few notes, with proper accompaniment, can say volumes. It’s how they say so much in so little time; it’s why revelations…you know, when they speak to humans directly, impart the Divine will?...are so frightening, so easy to misinterpret. Imagine your brain trying to translate a language that, in three syllables, just quoted the entire works of Shakespeare. That’s how this works.” Kurtis took another sip of his drink, his eyes distant, remembering.
“Even their names are crazy. They would always start a name with a particular sound…I still don’t know what that sound means, but it comes before every name every time they would say it.”
“Wait,” interrupted Sam, holding up a hand. “You heard them say names?” Kurtis nodded. “And…did you happen to figure out what any of those names were?”
Kurtis shook his head. “That’s the thing about proper names and language, son. There’s no way to translate it, unless it’s a cognate. Just is what it is, but if you can figure out the way a language works, you can figure out something about its naming conventions.”
“And do you know how those conventions work?”
“No way in hell,” Kurtis laughed as he saw Sam’s face fall. “Way too much bound up in those names, I’ll tell you that; if three syllables of normal talk would be Shakespeare, then one of their names is the entirety of the English language. In conceptual form. It’s mind-boggling.” He began to rake his salt-and-pepper mane with his hand, but stopped when he noticed that his empty beer bottle was still in his grasp. He chuckled and threw it into the kitchen, where it dropped neatly into the trash can.
“So how did Gregory get Gabriel’s name?”
“Must have been one of those on the tape.” Kurtis shrugged. “When Martha came back a few years ago, she was doing research for a paper of her own. A big one, she said. She had read my book and wanted to know more. I sat her down, a lot like this, and told her what I had figured out so far. She asked about the names; I gave ‘em to her. She was all smiles when she left. So far as I figure, your man Caitlin must have gotten those names from her and used them to trap our angel.”
“If he got the name from your information, then I can undo it with the same data. Do you have the notes? The names?”
“Of course I do!” His smile threatened to overreach its boundaries. “I’m still working on this, you know; just playing a few of their words…it shakes the Earth, man, just does something to you to hear it.” Still smiling, Kurtis got up and headed deeper into the house, leaving Sam alone to think for a bit. For the first time in a while, he felt optimistic; it wasn’t just faith that things would work out, but it actually seemed like they would. Even losing the Keys that his mother had left for him hadn’t stopped him; he had done it. Gabriel was going to be safe.
Kurtis came back into the living room carrying a sheaf of papers. He was sorting through them as he walked, mumbling to himself, looking for something in particular. His eyes lit up as he found it, grabbing a sheet from the pile and pulling it out with one hand. Sam reached out for the paper.
Then the world exploded.
Great fires raged across the living room, shattering the windows, melting metal into slag, incinerating plants, furniture, everything. The orange-white flood spread in moments, far faster than anyone would have expected; the investigators who came later would attribute this fire to arson, although there was no sign of an accelerant.
Kurtis screamed as the fire raced up his legs, turning jeans to ash in seconds and crisping flesh like bacon on an overheated pan. He dropped to the ground, shrieking, beating at the flames which seemed to laugh at his pathetic efforts in their feeding frenzy. They moved with a malevolent will, diving towards the humans in the room, passing up tasty combustibles in order to sate their hunger on mortal skin and bone. Withi
n seconds, the scream had ended, and Kurtis Birch was just a charred hunk of meat on the floor.
Sam was closer to the window than his unfortunate companion; as the fires streaked his way, he dove through the glass in an adrenaline-fueled leap, shards of the window shredding his forearms as he protected his face. His tuck and roll was not elegant, but it sufficed to get him to his feet, to allow him to observe the madness before him.
A spirit of pure flame, the efreet he had seen outside of Dr. Stone’s office, circled the building, cackling; its laughter caused the flames to reach higher, its gestures made them burn faster. The building became a seeming cyclone of flame, hotter and hotter, as the genie of fire indulged in its artistic destruction. Its maniacal laughter grew, and then its gaze fell on Sam, eyes burning in flaming sockets, and the cackle seemed to scorch Sam’s ears.
The efreet raised its clawed hands and dove at Sam, a streak of star-fire streaking toward him. Sam had no time to react.
Then he was thrown clear by a 40 mph gust of wind.
“Stand back, young Keeper!” The form of Sky-King materialized in a swirling blizzard, dropping the surrounding temperature by dozens of degrees. The efreet hovered in place, staring, hissing at the intruder.
“Begone, djinn, or perish here!” In contrast to the sharpness of Sky-King’s voice, the efreet crackled and hissed.
Sky-King expanded and contracted, roiling within. “If Samuel Buckland dies today, lowborn scum, it shall not be because I abandoned him!”
The two ephemeral beings lunged at each other, sending steam and snow spiraling around the front yard where Sam stood. Gouts of flame and mini-hailstorms whizzed through the air; grass froze over, then was scorched in a flash-fire a moment later. The combatants expanded into the sky, filling the air over the burning wreckage of Kurtis Birch’s house.
Sam could not make out the exact course of the battle; one moment, Sky-King had the upper hand, pummeling the fire spirit like a pugilist from another age. Immediately after, the djinn would be at the mercy of the efreet, struggling to loosen its hooked claws from around his throat.
To a mortal’s eye, if it could be seen, the battle would have taken less than a minute, but to Sam, whose eyes could watch the interplay between these two incarnations of natural forces, it went on for far longer. Two opposites strived against each other, neither conceding, neither surrendering, until the stronger was determined.
“Sky-King!” Sam as he climbed to his feet. The raging inferno had begun to overcome the snowstorm, and the djinn’s struggles seemed to be weakening. Sam ran toward the site of the battle, and, stretched out on the grass, he saw the defeated form of his friend, melting away under the heat of the victorious efreet; a small whirlwind whipped up as the icy orbs that were his eyes vanished.
The veins in Sam’s face stood out. His fists clenched, and his teeth ground against each other in fury. Caitlin had done it again, used his connections, used Gabriel, to find where he was…and send this monster to stop him. No. No more.
Sam rolled up his sleeves, stretched forward his hands. He concentrated on binding the genie before him, binding it to his will, taking control of it from its current master. He chanted the ritual words, anger pounding through his bloodstream like the flames the genie commanded.
Nothing happened.
The efreet laughed once more as the house collapsed, and then, its mission complete, it flew off into the sky, leaving another trail of fire behind it, the red streak dissipating as Sam watched, confused.
What the hell just happened? He looked at his hands, where the sigils had been written by his contract with God.
They were not there, either.
Sam’s heart dropped like a stone; he sank to the lawn, now oblivious to the dying inferno before him. God had abandoned him. God had taken his powers away, left him, left the world to the mercies of Gregory Caitlin. God had let Kurtis die and kept his death from being avenged.
Tears coursed down his face like twin rivers. His chest felt hollow, like it had when his parents had been murdered.
God had turned away from him. God had abandoned Gabriel.
“Well, how about that.” He spun his head around; on the grass, looking up at the flames, was a trim redhead, someone who had once told him that she was only a senior in high school.
He was looking at the telegram delivery girl. Complete with grey uniform and bicycle.
Sam stared for just a moment, then laughed. Of course.
“You’re the only one involved in this who hasn’t died, revealed themselves as an evil politician, or been some sort of celestial being. I should have known something was going on.”
The woman did not look away from the blaze. “You forgot yourself; you’re not dead, a politician, or an angel, are you?” Her blue eyes turned to him, and a smile touched the corners of her mouth.
“Not so far.” Sam bowed his head; weariness weighed him down. “Are you here to kill me? Stop me? I’ll tell you, right now I don’t have a whole lot of fight left in me.”
The delivery girl sat down next to him. “Tell me.”
“Well, first, this damn secret gets my parents killed…and it’s my fault, you know, because I didn’t believe my mom’s craziness about ‘holy wizards’…but how could I? I mean, I didn’t even have the background for it, no history…it’s like I was punished for not believing in invisible mud, you know? Just because it happens to exist doesn’t mean I had any real idea it could!”
The girl nodded, pulling her legs to her chest and laying her head on her knees as she listened to Sam.
“And then, everything I do, this bastard is one step ahead of me. He kills Dr. Stone, he gets me sent to jail – where, I might add, I accidentally end up getting two cops to kill each other – and then he murders Kurtis.” Sam punched at the ground, ignoring the pain twinging up his arm. “People never did anything to him except know something he didn’t want others to know…and if I hadn’t been looking, they’d still be alive.”
Again, the girl nodded, but Sam didn’t notice; he was too busy giving his diatribe, venting the pressure on his chest.
“And now, just now, God turns away from me. I tried to help, tried to do what He wanted me to do…and the power is gone. The magic is gone. What am I supposed to do if He’s going to take that away from me? What does He want from me?” A pause, and his words turned plaintive, seeking answers. “Why did he leave me?”
Sam sighed, tears still in his eyes, and looked over at his companion. “So, then, who are you, and why are you here now?”
The girl raised her head, smiling. “I’m…well, I’m sort of the Lord’s fact-advocate. I check things out, make sure everything’s running the way it’s supposed to…and intervene, if necessary, to fix the things that aren’t.”
Sam forced a laugh and wiped his tears. “Well, I don’t think things are ‘running the way they’re supposed to,’ since Caitlin has Gabriel trapped and Michael’s afraid to come out of his hidey-hole because he might get grabbed, too.” He stopped as he saw that she was shaking her head. “What?”
“Michael isn’t afraid. If the Lord hadn’t given him express instructions, he would have already stormed the place and tried to take our sister back by force. No, the Creator’s plans are complex, multi-layered, and not even the highest of the Host are privy to them all.”
“All right, so God ‘has a plan.’” Sam could hear his anger beginning to show in his voice. “What does that have to do with recruiting me and letting innocent people die?”
“Funny story, actually.” Blue eyes twinkled. “Turns out that…well, you’re right.”
Sam hadn’t really felt “right” about anything in so long it took a few moments for the words to sink in. “I’m…I’m what?”
“You’re right. It’s not fair. Moreover, it’s not what God intended at all; He planned for your mother to take up this burden, take the Keys, fight the evil.”
The first of the fire trucks rolled up, deploying its crew and gushing water
onto the crackling inferno. Sam didn’t notice.
“You mean…it wasn’t supposed to be me at all? Mom got it wrong?”
The girl nodded. “Exactly. Giant ‘whoops’ on our part.”
“So…so…” began Sam, hope blossoming in his heart, “…you’re going to bring her back? Change things?”
“I’m sorry, Sam, but this isn’t It’s a Wonderful Life. I don’t have that kind of power; we’re not even sure if the Almighty can reverse time, change history. Humanity’s free will is precious, after all, and if we were to violate it…well, we wouldn’t be angels, would we?”
Sam’s face fell. More emergency workers arrived; police and fire personnel stormed the building, set up roadblocks…and ignored the two on the lawn.
“So…what then?”
“I’m offering you the chance to cash out, Sam. I can’t change history, but I have a lot, and I mean a lot, of influence over the present. I have strings I could pull, get you your life back.” Sam began to say something, but she held up her hand, silencing him. “Well, most of it, anyway. Your old job, or a new one, if you would prefer. Pay raise. New house, new girl. I could even let you forget, wipe your memories of all this so you didn’t have to live your life wondering if a demon was on your shoulder.” Her eyes gleamed as she leaned toward Sam. “You’ve fought God’s battles for long enough, my friend. Longer than most would have. And it wasn’t even meant to be you. Let it go, get your just rewards; you’ve earned them.”
Sam was stunned. Since this had happened, he had begged for normalcy, then hoped for it, then resigned himself to the fact he would never have it again.
“…You can do that?” It was like his mind had locked up. “Really?”
The girl looked into his eyes. “Tell me I can’t.”
What Sam saw within those eyes defied description; if he had been pressed, he would have called them supernovae of power, said that all the possibilities of the world spun within them. He would have spoken of the rise of kingdoms, the accumulation of infinite wisdom, the achievement of world peace…or conquest. He would have seen the simple joys of family side by side with the heated passion of a lover and melded with the cold, clean happiness of money.
Chains of Prophecy: A Tale of Mythic Discovery Page 12