“Stand down, Azrael. Leave this one; he is under the Lord’s protection.”
The fifty-foot-tall angel knelt, one knee on the ground. “Great Michael, I cannot. I am bound by Solomon’s Keys. I must destroy Samuel Buckland.”
Sam started at the mention of Michael’s name. “…Mikey? Is that you?”
Michael did not turn. “Then I will fight you, brother, and when you are defeated, you will return to Heaven and away from the evil wielded against you.”
Azrael stood and bared all five of its weapons. “Thank you, Commander.” Its song lilted in sharp contrast to its form. “God be with you.”
“And with you, Azrael.”
Guess that divine intervention came through. Sam stood in awe as the two angels clashed. Azrael seemed to be the obvious victor; it swung viciously with sword and spear, parried with its axe and bullets rat-tat-tatted from the machine gun. When one threw in the gross size disparity, Michael more resembled a child fighting a professional boxer.
Except that he wasn’t. Michael was the Commander of Heaven’s Hosts, the angel who had thrown down the Lightbringer. He had no match.
Michael had unsheathed his glittering blade and hurled himself at Azrael with both weapons before him. He seemed to be everywhere at once, his weapons spinning, slicing, jabbing faster than Sam’s eye could follow. Each attack seemed designed to draw Azrael farther out of position, luring the larger angel into tiny mistakes which Michael’s unparalleled skill widened into gaping holes; each successful blow that Azrael struck led Michael into a deeper, more telling attack. Within two minutes, Michael, bleeding shimmering light from a hundred different minor wounds, had Azrael disarmed and defeated. His face set, Michael reversed his sword, held it aloft, and thrust it into the heart of the gigantic form of the other.
The angel’s dissolution was not a gentle process; lightning crashed and a momentary windstorm kicked up shattering nearby windows and swirling debris in a wide circle. Sam covered his eyes to protect them from the radiance that Azrael’s body was giving off. Then it was gone, and the only evidence that Azrael had ever been there, besides the destruction he had left behind, was the fading glow inside of Sam’s eyelids.
Michael turned, panting, to look at Sam. He smiled when he saw that the Keeper was unharmed.
“What are you doing here, Michael?”
“You could not have survived Azrael, Sam.” The Archangel sheathed his blade. “You are too important. I could not let him…” Michael’s words trailed off, and his eyes widened.
“No.” He held up his arms, and Sam saw chains of red light begin to form on them, words which he recognized.
They were the same words that were on Gabriel’s chains. The ones from his dream.
Sam lunged out of his protective circle toward Michael, but the Archangel shook his head.
“You cannot save me this way, Samuel Buckland.” The runic script crawled up his upper arms, onto his neck. “Run. Gabriel needs you.”
“But…” began Sam.
The sigils had begun to illuminate Michael’s face with a hellish red glow. “Go!”
Then he smiled.
“And God be with you, Keeper of the Keys.”
Sam stood a second longer, then nodded. He turned around and, sprinting off, he spun his hands to invoke the janni, genies of the Earth itself, minor compared to efreet or djinn but still useful.
“Sam!” Michael’s voice came as if down an echoing hallway. “I am no longer my own; if you can still hear me, then run! Run!”
Sam’s spell was complete; he sank into the desert soil as if it were quicksand, wrapped in darkness…but the earth around him did not impede his breathing, did not crush nor constrict him. He was wrapped in the embrace of the jann, secure and safe unless someone took a shovel to this spot and dug six feet down. Still, Sam’s breathing was fast as he tried to calm his heart, his mind.
He felt something like a sonic boom shake the ground which served as his shelter. Just another couple of minutes. He took a deep breath. Just to make sure he’s gone.
Then he was asleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gregory Caitlin stared at the angry Archangel imprisoned within the warded room in the SRD building.
He could see Michael pacing back and forth, unable to come within six inches of the walls or door because of the spells placed on them. He seemed a caged lion or tiger, leashed ferocity held at bay only by the bars and the locks placed on them. From one end of the room to the other the angel walked, searching the walls with his eyes, seeking a weakness, a vulnerability.
And if he finds one, then I’m dead.
Gregory headed into the restroom, splashed water on his face. The dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced now, evidence of his sleeplessness and worry. His wife had finally stopped calling, and so had his work. This bothered Gregory, on some level; he knew that he should care, but every time he started to, something…came up. Distracted him.
“What’s going on?” He stared at his reflection. “What am I doing? What have I done?”
What you needed to do.
Gregory froze. This was the first time he had heard the voice in his mind; it had only been on the computer screen before. How he knew it was the same voice…he wasn’t sure.
But it was.
“Why?” He wiped his face, looked in the mirror again, asked once more. “Why? It was Michael, for God’s sake! And I…I trapped him, captured him! Why?”
A moment’s pause while the words hung in the air…and then Gregory’s reflection moved of its own accord. A smile stretched across the tired face, and the eyes seemed to glitter.
“He wouldn’t have let you destroy Buckland.” Gregory thought that he saw the end of a forked tongue behind the shining teeth, but on his second glance, it was gone. “You have a mission, Gregory. You are going to bring peace, prosperity, wonder to all of mankind. Remember?”
And that was the worst of it. Gregory did remember; he remembered the stories that he was told as a child of how God loved all his children and wanted only what was best for them. He remembered how his faith in the Lord got him in trouble as he grew older, because he was willing to fight for it. Fights at school, in the churchyard…just kid fights, of course, no one really got hurt, but he had been serious.
He remembered that day three years ago when his parents had died. Both of them, within an hour of each other, had just fallen over. The autopsies had revealed no apparent causes of death; their bodies had just…stopped working. Gregory had almost gone crazy then; the arbitrariness of it all had nearly destroyed him. He hadn’t been sure that he could live in a world where good people, people like his parents, could just…die.
In his despair, he had reached out to many people; many of them took his money and left him feeling the emptier for it. Then he found the old man. Easily seventy years old and maybe more, this man had looked like he was down on his luck, homeless, hungry.
The scene replayed itself in Gregory’s mind: there he was, walking out of a Denny’s diner after spending hours drinking coffee and trying to deal with his latest disappointment. A dirty, almost clawed hand reached out, grabbed him by the arm. Caitlin recoiled, looking to his side; there stood the old man, teeth jangling in his mouth like yellowed piano keys.
“You need a miracle, son?” The young man had gasped; the other’s breath reminded him of forgotten refrigerator leftovers.
“Let go.” Gregory tried to pull his arm free without hurting the old man.
“I know how to make miracles, you know.” The man let go of the other’s arm and tipped him a wink. Gregory shook his head, started to walk away, afraid to make eye contact.
“Thanks, but…” He turned away, trying to avoid the crazy man’s glare. He had just reached the corner when he bumped into someone who he hadn’t seen before. “Oh, I’m sorry…”
The “person” he had bumped into was not human. Caitlin was looking up about two feet into a face made of stone, with eyes made fr
om azure sapphires and teeth of violet amethysts. The figure was unclothed, but had no anatomy to hide; its body seemed to be made of chiseled marble, granite, and sandstone.
Caitlin stared for several moments, then turned back toward the Denny’s door and the old man still standing beside it.
“I told you I could make miracles!” The old man laughed as he hobbled over to where Caitlin was.
“H…how did you do that?” Gregory’s eyes kept straying toward the stone form.
“With this!” The old man reached his hand into his backpack,, pulling out a burnt book.. The book looked like it had been bound in leather, but the binding was frayed, and many of the pages were scorched and black in places, unreadable in a few.
“These are the Keys of Solomon, young man.” The old fellow held Caitlin’s gaze, his eyes now bright, devouring Gregory’s face as he spoke. “You know Solomon, don’t you?”
Gregory nodded, unable to speak, looking at the book, then back at the figure. “My family had it for a few hundred years, I guess,” continued the old man, “but…something happened a while back. My uncle managed to get away with it, and when he passed it came to me.” The man laughed, startling Caitlin out of his reverie. “I don’t have kids of my own, you see; I’ve been worried that I’d have to just give this away to someone just to keep its secrets alive when I’m gone. But you.” He pointed at Gregory’s face, smiling. “You need it, don’t you? You need miracles. You need God’s power.”
Gregory shied away. “I…I don’t think…” The old man interrupted him.
“I can’t just give this to anyone, you know.” He crossed his arms. “I need you to promise me, Mr. Caitlin, that you’ll only use what’s in this book to help people. Help all of humanity, like my dad did, and his before him. Can you do that?”
Caitlin looked at the book, then at the stone giant behind him. If I had that kind of power, think of how much I could do! I could help so many people, fix so many things!
Make it so arbitrary tragedies didn’t hit good people. Or their parents.
“All right.” Caitlin’s words thudded against the air like a hammer. “I’ll take the book.”
Tears left Caitlin’s eyes as he came back to the present. The atmosphere of the SRD building seemed to press in on him, the contrast between the sunny street in front of the Denny’s stark and jarring.
The Greater Good, Caitlin, came the voice. The Greater Good.
~~~
Francis retreated down the hall from the restroom. He had been worried about his boss’s sanity before; now he was sure of it.
He hurried into his office, locked the door, and wiped the sweat from his face. He didn’t know what it was that Caitlin had come back with today; the scene when he had arrived had resembled the stereotypical “black-shop” deals he’d read in King novels and such: a big van, blacked out windows. No one allowed in or out until the van had left. Caitlin himself had been in the cordoned-off area for hours and had just come back out.
Francis pondered for a moment, then leaned forward to his computer terminal and started searching.
“What’s going on here?” His fingers raced as he cleared passwords, accessed top-level clearance files. Caitlin had offered him this position personally two years ago, on the strength of his research into dreams and brain activity. He had been excited about the research project, especially when he had heard about its goal of interpreting dreams to predict the future. Francis had believed in “psychic” phenomena since he was young, despite his exposure to the scientific community and its general disdain for such ideas.
His hackles had been raised when he had first seen the environment that Subject G had been put into. Human experimentation had always been an issue with science, and organizations had put regulations into place in order to limit just the sort of thing he had seen that day. The experimental setup was…garish, medieval; the equipment was there but there was no attempt to make her comfortable…or even keep the setting sanitary. Caitlin refused to let anyone into the experimental area once all of the monitors were set up. Francis was up late that night, wrestling with himself, until he came to a decision. He was going to walk out, despite the pay, despite the chance the research offered to prove his ideas…
Until she had been right.
When the first predictions had started rolling in, and each one was letter-perfect, Francis had been standing in the doorway of Caitlin’s office with his resignation in hand. These were not the vague predictions of Nostradamus, requiring interpretation to possibly fit into events; these were crystal-clear, exact, precise in every detail. The place had been abuzz with excitement; 100% accuracy was a dream that even hard-core psychic believers never dared hope for.
And here it was. Francis’ resignation had gone into the shredder, and his conscience had gone with it. Two years had gone by, and Francis had managed to distance himself from what was going on, relegating the girl to her designation.
Forgetting that she was a person.
Then Samuel Buckland had come, and the cracks had appeared in Gregory Caitlin’s armor. The Special Research Division had become something other than just a business and political operation; Caitlin had pulled its resources into something resembling a war.
Loading, came the prompt on the screen. Francis took a drink from his Yale University water bottle, drummed his fingers on his desk. Hearing that someone was working against Caitlin, actually opposing him directly in some way, had shaken Francis’ ability to ignore what was happening.
“Prophetic dreams be damned.” He wiped the water from his lips. “This needs to end.” He looked back at the computer screen.
Password required.
“Goddamn it!” What would Caitlin use as a password? Birthdates, important people…what?
I can’t try it if I’m not sure. Sweat beaded on his forehead, running into his eyes. It’ll lock me out; he’ll know I was here…damn, what is it?
Francis stared at the screen, cursor blinking in the password field, licking his lips, trying to get into Caitlin’s head. His collar stuck to his neck as his fingers stretched out to the keyboard.
“God.” Francis’ head knelt in prayer. “If You’re up there, and this is what You want, then fine. Let me get caught. All right. But…” and here Francis shook his head. “…but if this Buckland is really on your side, and this is all wrong, then help me, God. Give me a sign. Help me do this.”
Francis’ fingertips brushed the keyboard, then typed nine keystrokes.
Deus vult.
Logging you in, Gregory…
Francis broke into a smile, the fear washing away from him in an instant as the two typed words unlocked the deepest secrets of Gregory Caitlin and the Special Research Division.
~~~
Sam opened his eyes, then rubbed his hand over them to make sure that he had, in fact, opened them. The darkness he was in was total, complete; he reached his hands out and they felt as if they were passing through water. Panic did its best to settle in.
Where am I? What’s going…
Then the memories hit him: Michael. Azrael. The jann. Hiding in the earth. Where he was now.
Sam shook his head to clear it, then stretched forward his hands. Rise, came the command, and he felt his body floating through the dirt, sand, and finally asphalt before cresting above the street’s level once more. The sun blinded him as he rose, and he blinked his eyes several times as they adjusted.
Then he wished he had not.
The place was devastated; the explosions had left whole blocks decimated, the McDonald’s across the street from the Shell had suffered a direct hit from an airborne gas pump and the building had cracked in half. The piles of dead insects were still on the sides of the street, although most of them had been swept off the road proper by now. The onramps to the highway were cracked and collapsed in places. Emergency sirens screeched through the air, bystanders gaped and pointed at the destruction, in awe of the chaos, unaware that it was caused by a battle royale bet
ween two Archangels.
Sam tore his gaze away from the carnage. He had to find Gabriel’s name…and now, Michael’s, he realized. Michael was a prisoner of the enemy as well. Sam chuckled a bit to himself, laughter the only defense in the face of the monumental absurdity of the tasks before him.
I’ll need a ride…He stopped, a genuine smile creasing his face. Underneath the Shell sign, hidden beneath a ramp of twisted metal which had, by chance, formed a lean-to as it fell, was his car.
Unharmed. Unscratched, almost, except for the insects still in it. Sam walked over, examined it more closely. All the bugs were dead, but they had gotten everywhere; it would take a few hours to clean them out…but he didn’t have a few hours. He pulled out his keys.
Please, God. Please, he thought as he turned the key in the ignition. The engine turned over…then caught, exoskeletons coughing out of the exhaust pipe as the car roared to life. Sam jumped in joy, cupped his hand, then scooped as many insects off of his seat and out of the driver’s side area as he could. When he could see the floorboards and pedals again, he nodded, sat down (ignoring the crunch from the remaining corpses), and drove out from under the shelter his Ford Falcon had found.
Sam noted the road closure signs leading back up to the 14; he would need to find a back road, an alternate route. A grim smile crossed his lips; at least he had filled up on gas before this shit had gone down.
Where do you go now? It wasn’t the first time he had asked himself that question. Still to his house? What if he’s there? Maybe that’d be a good thing, actually…
He found another onramp to the 14 and turned south, heading toward Northridge. Traffic was slow until he made it past the site of the attack again, rubber-neckers and people parked on the side of the street to look over the bridge clogging up the lanes. As he drove, he flipped the radio on to listen to 103.9 FM. 50 Ways to Say Goodbye was just ending.
Chains of Prophecy: A Tale of Mythic Discovery Page 14