to shame. “But it hardly matters, does it? Either you called in the cavalry, or you were so fucking incompetent in get ting here they tracked you. You’ll pay dearly either way, I assure you. But now, unfortunately, I have to delay the pleasure of flaying you alive, so I can deal with this fucking mess you’ve made. Don’t worry, though —I’ll be back before you know it.”
A leathery rustle, the click of claws on stone, and Dumas was gone —gone so quickly that he was through the narrow aperture of Danny’s hovel and out of sight before I even hit the ground.
Which I did.
Hard.
And then got whacked square in the back by a stone the size of a fucking cantaloupe falling from above.
This week was not my favorite ever.
The cantaloupe brought friends. Like half the fucking roof. Shit pelted me like this was a game of dodgeball and I was the last kid standing, only harder, meaner, and from above. OK, maybe it wasn’t so much like a game of dodgeball as it was a game of try-not-to-get-stoned-to-death. I’d never played that one before, but I hoped to God I’d catch on quick.
Got up. To my knees, at least. Felt like an accomplishment, till I got knocked back down. Figured maybe up wasn’t the way to go. Figured instead I’d stay low.
I protected my head as best I could with my bum arm. The tendons in my shoulder hurt like hell, holding it up like that, and the old bean still got clocked a couple times, but I deflected enough blows to stay conscious, so we’ll call that a win. Tried to snatch the torch with my good arm, but the steady rain of dust from above proved too much for it, extinguishing the flame.
That was OK. I’d seen darkness aplenty those past two days. I was starting to get used to it.
What was harder to get used to was the constant battery outside —like London in the fucking Blitz —and the deadly hail of rocks it set upon me.
A stone dagger shook loose from the ceiling and sliced along my side, through fabric and skin both. The wound burned white hot, the only light in the room —and I could see it even when my eyes were closed. Hurt enough it made me lower my shieldarm for a moment. Then a quick shot to my temple reminded me why that was a bad idea.
A crushing blow from nowhere set off fireworks in my kidney. Something inside me went all wet and loose. I’ll be pissing blood if I get out of here alive, I thought. The notion didn’t fill me with warm fuzzies.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking why didn’t I let nature take its course and say sayonara to this poor pathetic meat-suit? After all, just two days back I was rooting for the bug-monster to kill me, so why not? Why bother busting ass for the privilege of wandering smack into the middle of an angel/demon grudge match when I could take my chances with reseeding and hope I wind up possessing someone hale and hearty and way the fuck away from here? And believe me, I get where you’re coming from. But there’s a couple things I’m privy to that you’re not.
Thing One: dying fucking hurts.
Thing Two: dying
How bad does dying hurt? So bad that even if shit’s hitting the fan full-on and you’ve got no other choice, you still stop and check the math to make sure it don’t add up another way. And yeah, OK, I’ll cop to trying to goad the bug-monster into killing me, but there were extenuating circumstances —namely the fact that I was (mistakenly, as it turned out) pretty sure he was going to kill me anyway. So I wasn’t so much rooting for death as I was for him to make it quick. Big difference.
Besides, the key to a successful reseeding is luck, and lots of it. Luck’s the difference between winding up in a millionaire meat-suit with a private jet or an invalid in an adult diaper without enough spare juice to raise his head, let alone allow you to hop hosts.
Now do I strike you as the lucky type?
Yeah, that’s what I thought —which is why most times I’d just as soon take my chances in the here and now, regardless of the crappiness of said here and now.
Sick of getting pummeled, I crawled toward where I figured the door was, but ran into Danny’s cot instead. I started to turn around, and then I got me the beginnings of an idea, so I stopped. My fingers traced the cot’s metal frame until I found the hinge. Then I folded it in half and climbed under. It was a tight fit, me hunched inside my makeshift Aframe tent, but it was better than being crushed to death. It was, at best, a temporary solution; the way this place was filling up, I had to get through that crawlspace and into the outer chamber fast if I wanted to keep this meat-suit breathing.
I tried sliding the whole shebang forward, toward the door. Too damn many rocks in the way. I looped my hands around the frame and lifted, figuring I’d use it all umbrella-like and knee-walk over, but the uneven terrain required all fours to maneuver, which is to say I tipped over and wound up on my face.
I won’t lie —tipping over hurt. Hurt enough it took a sec to realize I wasn’t getting pummeled anymore. I could hear shit falling, sure —louder every second, in fact, suggesting this room wasn’t going to be a room much longer —but it was no longer reaching me. Seemed the cot had gotten wedged against the wall, building me a little fort. But by the creaking of its frame, it wasn’t going to stay wedged for long.
I clawed over rock and dirt and the still-hot cinders of the torch, mindful not of the scratches and burns I inflicted on myself in the process, only of the door, of freedom, of
There it was.
A sound like a thousand hoofbeats as the ceiling caved in, and the darkness around me imploded. I dove for the passage as the cot crunched beneath the sudden weight. Hot, stale, dusty breath chased after me as all the air in the heap of rock that used to be a room was expelled along with me. And then the ceiling of the crawlspace popped overhead like a crack spreading through glass, the sound zipping past me in the darkness and letting me know I wasn’t out of the woods yet.
I scampered through the short passage and into the slightly larger outer chamber of Dumas’s socalled monkey house, only realizing I’d left the crawlspace behind when the echoes of its collapse reverberated off the walls around me. All I wanted was to collapse as well, bloodied and spent as my egress from Danny’s burrow had left me. But the muffled booms of the angels’ continued onslaught, and the constant patter of pebbles on the dirt floor, suggested that wouldn’t be prudent. Suggested that Danny’s hidey-hole was only the beginning. Suggested that if I didn’t get my ass out of these caves and into the open desert air, my ass was gonna get a whole lot flatter.
So I kept moving.
Finding the fissure that connected the monkey house to the main cavern wasn’t easy. Damn thing was only sideways-me wide, and in complete darkness, every nook and cranny in the cavern wall felt like pay dirt. I must’ve circumnavigated the chamber twice before I finally found it, and beat to hell as I was, squeezing through was no mean feat. But, halting though my progress was, it was progress, and eventually, I spilled from the crevice, tumbling to the dirt floor and squinting against the sudden light.
Sweet Christ, was I sick of falling down.
Turns out, though, much as it hurt, that fall was lucky as all get-out. Not like it was strategy or anything —I was just beat up enough I was having trouble supporting my own weight, is all —but still, it was lucky nonetheless. ’Cause when I fell, I wound up hunkered behind one of them rock formations that juts up from the floors of caves —stalagmite or stalactite, I can never keep them straight —and so I managed not to run afoul of the angry angel.
I should’ve known that this light I stumbled into was too bright, too white —too pure to be cast by torches alone. Should’ve recognized it for what it was. Because I’d seen light like this before. Breathtaking. Painful. Glorious. Deadly.
The light of God’s grace.
The light that emanates from His most trusted servants —and from His deadliest assassins.
Most times, were you to spy an angel topside, you’d never know it. They, I don’t know, seem to dim their natural light, and project a sort of vague suggestion of human form that your eyes slide right off of. I mean, you register the basics. Eyes? Check. Hair? Check. Two arms? Two legs? Yup and yup. But if I were to ask you what
