by Ramy Vance
It kept ringing. And ringing.
Finally, it did go to voicemail. As soon as I heard Justin’s pre-recorded voice, I pulled the phone away from my ear.
I couldn’t say what I needed to say over voicemail. I just couldn’t.
The old me would have mumbled something about wanting to talk to him, and she would have sounded vaguely penitent without ever saying sorry. The new me just hung up—I would get my chance to do it right when I got back to Montreal—and sat down in my seat.
Or at least I tried to, because as I turned, I was greeted by a very human, very naked Egya. “Hello Kat,” he said, not covering up his, well, his … his.
“You’re back.” I looked past him. “Burnt some time?”
Aldie shook his head. “Nope, the boy did it on his own. I just guided him as he searched for the power to transform.”
“What?” I said, my mind reeling with the possibilities. “You still have magic?”
Egya shook his head. “No, I did it without magic.”
“How?”
“Aldie. He showed me to channel my inner”—Egya paused, searching for the word—“chi? Chakras? I have no idea; I was never into that kind of stuff.”
“Actually, I just helped your breath. It is amazing what you can do if you can just slow the mind, oxygenate the blood and well … just be.”
“Come again?” I said.
“Never mind. The point is that magic isn’t just unknown forces being bent to our will. Sometimes magic is our own bodies listening to our needs. Egya here spent centuries being able to transform into a hyena at will. He was forced into that form not because Enoch wanted him to be a hyena, but because that was all Enoch’s little trick could pull off. Think about it: if he really wanted to make Egya harmless, he would have turned him into a rabbit or a gerbil. Not a hyena. So, whatever he cast on your friend was designed to unlock something that was already within him. What was once unlocked remains unlocked. And once you open a door—well, doors are designed for you to walk through in both directions.”
“Ugh, more self-help platitudes.”
“Call it what you want, but through some breathing techniques and guided meditation, I showed Egya how to walk through that door.”
“Does that mean he can turn back?” I turned to Egya. “Can you?”
Egya took three deep breaths and said, “I don’t know. But I feel different.”
“He should. In theory. There are studies that seem to indicate that were-transformation isn’t just magic, but rather two states of being in one body. I don’t think he’ll be able to be fully hyena again, but certainly he can bring out a number of traits. An elongated nose, clawed fingers. Some extra fur to keep himself warm at night. That kind of stuff.” Aldie reached into one of his overhead compartments and pulled out a CD. “I did a whole seminar on it. Here’s the recording. Very low attendance, unfortunately. I guess were-creatures who are human now weren’t really interested in unleashing their inner beasts again. That, or it sounded too far-fetched for them. Whatever it was, that was the talk that made me decide to shift my focus onto Others. There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not thankful for that failure.”
“Arrgh. You are too much, Aldie,” I said. But even as those words came out, what I really felt was that he wasn’t too much, but rather—something else. In a good way. A very good way.
Deirdre stirred, and seeing a naked Egya before her, said in a sleepy tone, “Oh good, we’re allowed to be naked in public. Finally,” before passing out again.
↔
Egya was a good eight inches taller than Aldie and had considerably more bulk that the dark elf, so when he borrowed some clothes, they only wrapped around him, barely concealing anything. He looked like the Incredible Hulk mid-transformation, and I wasn’t entirely sure that it was an improvement … especially because Egya was damn hot. Still, at least his bits weren’t flapping in the wind anymore.
I gave the stupid chuckler a big hug. “So good to have you back.”
“Good to be back.”
We lingered there a little too long. I guessed I worried about him more than I’d thought. “I, ahh, should really thank Aldie again. He’s put everything at risk and …”
“Awkward hug?” Egya giggled. “Can’t express your feelings for too long, Kat … you might finally become that human you want to be.” And with that, he chuckled as a giant grin painted his face.
“Here’s a feeling I can express,” I said, giving him the finger as I walked to the cockpit.
“Thank you,” I said to Aldie.
“For?”
“For Egya, for everything.”
Aldie did that fists-crisscrossed-on-the-chest thing. “I owe you.”
“For what?”
“You know.”
“For breaking up with me? That’s long gone. Water under the bridge,” I lied. It was a wound that hadn’t yet completely healed, but with everything that had happened over the past two days, it was starting to.
“No, I do not owe you for breaking up with you. That was necessary for all the reasons I mentioned before. I owe you for how I broke up with you. I was unnecessarily cruel.”
“Yeah, I’ll say.” I thought back to that evening. It was a long story, but let us just say that he got engaged to an elf in a very public way on our anniversary.
“I did it that way because I was closing a door.”
“Because doors are designed for you to walk both ways through them. Yeah, I’ve heard.”
He nodded. “I needed to close that door. And being cruel was the only way I knew how.”
“It’s fine.”
“Is it?”
“No, but it will be.”
“That is enough for now,” he said before his brow furled with concern. “That spell Enoch cast on your friend that unlocked his doorway to transformation? Your beast still resides within you. He could use it on you. He could turn you back into a vampire.”
“No,” I said. “He needs me intact, with my soul in my body. Vampires lose their soul as soon as they’re transformed.”
“And if he had a spell that would allow you to keep your soul?”
“A vampire with a soul … who ever heard of that?” I giggled.
Aldie gave me a blank look. He obviously wasn’t a Whedon fan. “Whatever he wants or does not want from you … a spell like the one he used on Egya is powerful magic. Magic that even gods would struggle wielding. You don’t know what he is capable of.”
“Sadly, I do,” I said.
“And …”
“And I need to get this troublesome thing to the one angel who knows how to deal with him.”
“Michael.”
“Michael. Now if only we could take off and—”
As if my prayers were answered, the plane’s comms came on. We were approved for takeoff.
Yay, now all we needed to do was fly halfway across the world to convince an archangel that we weren’t a threat while trying to hand him one of the most powerful magical items on Earth while being hunted by an ex-angel and his henchman.
No problemo …
Angels and Air Control
“Big problemo,” I muttered as the plane rattled and shook. After a relatively smooth flight from Okinawa, we were under celestial siege by one enormous and very determined angel.
Oche.
He was flying right next to us, diving in and out of view as he brandished a huge sword in our faces.
I looked at my watch. We still had six hours before the truce ended, and given we were flying over Paradise Lot airspace, that should have given us plenty of time to land and find Michael. But instead, we had an angel riding our ass. “We still have hours left,” I yelled.
Aldie shook his head as he held onto the controller, his brow furrowed as he tried to anticipate Oche’s next move. “You said one day, right? Since we flew east, we lost hours. Lots of hours. If anything, they gave us extra time.”
“Oh, great. Thanks.” I was fumbling with Aldie’
s phone, trying to call Paradise Lot’s police station. The thing about phones in the sky is, even though we were closer to the satellites, they don’t really work. I guess they were programmed for phones that operated at certain heights. “Can you take us lower?”
“How much lower?”
“I don’t know … as low as the highest mountain peak around here?” I studied the screen. “I’ll let you know as soon as I get a signal.”
“Why?” I heard Deirdre groan with anxiety. “I hate these metal birds. One is meant to ride atop a dragon, not in its belly.”
Deirdre was having one hell of a time with it. Egya on the other hand, was laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I yelled over my shoulder.
“I just learned how to find my inner hyena—something I have craved since the gods left—and I’m about to die. The gods aren’t gone. They’re here. And they’re fucking with us, laughing their asses off.” He pointed to the sky and cackled. “I get the joke, you sadistic bastards. And I love it!”
“Great. We’ve got Lt. Dan back there.”
Aldie groaned. “Forrest Gump? The scene on the boat?”
“Indeed.”
“Good pop culture reference. Now hold on.” Aldie pushed the controller away from him and the plane’s nose took a dive. Oche appeared in the descending window. He wore a look of puzzled amusement that said, Are you crashing the plane for me? How considerate of you.
“Do we have a signal?” Aldie cried out.
“Planes that are rapidly descending really do make a cartoonish vroom noise,” I thought as I stared at the screen. “Nothing yet.”
“Keep me posted,” he said like he wasn’t nosediving a plane into the ground.
“Come on, come on, come on!” I was willing the little 4G symbol to pop up—or 3G, or even a friggin’ ‘E.’ Anything. And just as I was considering searching for a Wi-Fi signal, a single bar of signal appeared. “Got it!”
Aldie pulled on the controller, and we leveled out as I dialed 911. The phone rang. Then rang again.
It rang a third time before I finally heard a soft, lovely voice on the other end say, “Paradise Lot Police Department. Please state your emergency.”
“I’m in a crashing plane being chased by an angel because I have Rooh Ina’ah—the Soul Jar, something that the archangel Gabriel told me I needed to deliver to Michael.”
Pretty succinct description of our situation, if I do say so myself. But it also sounded insane, and I worried the dispatcher would dismiss me as a prank caller.
Only in Paradise Lot would a statement like that be taken seriously. “OK, I need you to calm down, ma’am, and tell me where you are.”
I looked out the cockpit window as a rush of desert rolled before us. “I have no idea. I just see sand. Like I said, I’m in a pl—”
And before I could finish, the plane jolted and I felt a rush of wind. Turning, I saw the sky through the hole that Oche had torn in the back of the plane. And by hole, I mean he ripped off the entire back.
The angel stalked into the cabin, his hand extended. “The Soul Jar.”
Deirdre stood. “You shall not pass!”
Did she really just make a Lord of the Rings reference? She’s becoming more and more human every day, was my last thought as the changeling dove into Oche, forcing him out the back of the plane.
↔
Deirdre was gone, the back of the plane was gone … but what was most worrying was that Egya’s cackles were gone. He wasn’t laughing, which could only mean one thing.
We were screwed.
Aldie held onto my hand. “You may want to assume the position.”
“I thought you said it doesn’t do anything.”
“It doesn’t,” he said, hugging his knees.
When in Rome, I thought, and hugged my own.
There were a series of thwacking noises as we hit the ground before bouncing back up and hitting again. We must have done that four times before the windshield broke, inviting in a sandstorm that buried us alive.
Deserts, Trees and Choices
I knew we had survived when I heard Egya’s cackle. Normally that noise grated on my recently reinstated soul. But hearing it then was music to my ears. We had survived the crash.
But given that Oche was inevitably waiting for us out there, I knew our situation hadn’t improved. As I dug out of the sand that covered my body, I thought of the age-old adage: Out of the frying pan and into the arms of a murderous angel.
“You OK?” I asked, reaching out a hand to Aldie.
I couldn’t find him. He wasn’t there. Moreover, his seat wasn’t there. The initial thwacks must have dislodged his seat, which meant that he was somewhere behind us. Thoughts of the worst swam through my head. “He could be mangled, or buried under sand, suffocating. He could be—”
“Then we best go find him,” Egya said. The were-hyena had already unstrapped himself and was reaching to unstrap my own belt. Say what you will about him, he could be calm in a plane crash. There wasn’t anyone else in the world I wanted by my side in a fight.
“OK, let’s go.” I peeled myself out of my seat and headed to the back of the plane.
Outside, I saw that we had driven head-first into a sand dune. Desert surrounded us, but because of the nature of the dunes, we had to climb up to see much farther.
We couldn’t see any sign of Aldie or Deirdre and Oche. I worried for my fae friends. Aldie for being helplessly ripped out of a plane, and Deirdre because she now faced off against an angel who had bested her in battle before. She was powerful. Very powerful. And for Oche to have done to her what he did showed just how dangerous he was.
“I thought Paradise Lot was an island near Europe,” Egya said as we took in the desert’s expanse. He pointed in the direction of a single giant oak tree that stood alone in a sea of nothing.
“We are,” I said. “I studied this place. Paradise Lot is the only Other-majority place on Earth, with a disproportionate number of portals opening here. Where we are standing was once a lush forest. When the gods left, everything died. And not just died, withered into nothing. Everything but that tree.”
“Let me guess, they’ve nicknamed it the Tree of Life?”
“Good guess.” But when I saw his face, I understood that he was playing with me. “You knew that already.”
“Jeopardy. 1000 points in the ‘How Our World Changed’ category.”
“Humph. Shall we?” I pointed toward the back of the plane. “If we’re going to find them, they’ll be that way.”
↔
There was no point in hiding. Either Deirdre had won and we needed to find her, or she’d lost and Oche would take to the sky, find the wreckage and come after us. All that was left for us to do was find our friends and prepare for a fight.
As we struggled to walk on the uneven sand, I heard Egya breathing hard. He was out of shape, or—
Looking at my friend, I saw that his nose had extended slightly, and the tips of his fingers had elongated into sharp claws. “Shit, Aldie’s breathing thing really works?”
“It does.” His voice came out deeper, sultrier, like a low growl. Egya lifted his nose into the air and sniffed. “Aldie is that way.” Another sniff. “And Deirdre is that way.” He was pointing in two different directions.
Deciding which way to go was like Sophie’s Choice—if her choice was deciding which of the two people she loved deeply she was going to save. Truth is, I have no idea what Sophie’s Choice is about. I’ve never seen it.
In the end, Egya made the decision for me. “Separating now will only mean we all die. We go for Deirdre. We deal with the threat. And in the unlikely event we survive, we find Aldie.” He wasn’t laughing, but staring at me with a deadly seriousness I had never seen in him before. He knew the stakes full well, and he was ready to see this to the bitter end.
We trekked in the direction of where Deirdre should be. It took about ten minutes of walking, but eventually we found her. She was fine, walking in the
direction of the tree.
“Deirdre,” I called out, running to my changeling friend. “Deirdre!”
The changeling turned and let out the biggest yelp of joy. “Milady! Milady lives. I was sure you were consumed by the demise of the flying beast.”
Tears of relief poured out of her and she wrapped one powerful arm around me. It was only up-close that I saw her other arm hung useless at her side. “Your arm?”
“Destroyed in the crash.”
“What do you mean, destroyed? I’m sure it’s only broken. A cast and some time and you’ll be good as new.” But as I took a closer look, I knew I was lying. Her arm was mush. It must have broken in two dozen places. The fact that she wasn’t reeling in pain was a testament to the changeling’s strength.
Tear of remorse flowed from me. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry for bringing you into this. I’m so sorry—”
“No, milady. I am grateful, for you have given me something that I craved more than life itself. Purpose.”
“Purpose?”
She nodded. “And right now, my purpose is to prepare for the angel’s return.”
Wiping away tears of my own, I looked around. “Where … where is he?”
“Mid-battle, I heard a ringing. The brutish angel took to the sky before stating that he would return to finally end me. I can only assume his master called him, and that the two of them will return imminently. I am going to the tree, as it is the only place with even ground and cover. It is the best place for us to stage our final stand.”
“Final stand, eh?” Egya giggled. “Optimistic much?”
Deirdre gave Egya a look that would have silenced a banshee. “Yes, our final stand. For today we die. Let it be glorious.”
Angels, Stones and Indecisions
The tree was massive, with a low canopy hanging just above us. If I jumped, I could grab one of the low-hanging branches, but I saw no strategic advantage to it. The only thing this tree really offered us was cover, which took away Oche’s ability to use his flight against us.