Stryker. Cease and desist. Lie on the ground, facedown, hands on your heads.” The guards held their ground at the open cell door.
Maddy released Theresa, tossing Conrad to one side and scrambling to assume the position on the other. “That bitch attacked this guard. I was trying to save her!”
Conrad heaved himself slowly to his knees and crawled back toward Theresa, who lay very, very still.
“Halt, Iver. Do not touch her.” One of the new arrivals swung her stun gun toward Conrad.
Conrad ignored them. Reaching Theresa, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and put his ear to her chest.
“Get away from her!” one of the guards yelled, stun gun trained on him. Another guard entered the cell, weapon holstered. She grabbed Conrad’s shoulder and pulled him away. He knelt where she’d dragged him, yelling, “She needs CPR. Call 911, you idiots!”
To their credit, the guards immediately radioed for medical assistance.
Conrad climbed to his feet, panting hard. He moved as far from Maddy as the cell would allow and placed his hands on his head.
Another of the guards knelt by Theresa’s body, repeating Conrad’s assessment. “She’s dead. I don’t think any—”
Suddenly everything froze. The guard ceased speaking mid-word, mouth open like a badly timed photograph. Conrad’s panting and Maddy’s accusations ceased. Even the dust motes stopped dancing in the cell’s fluorescent light.
And speaking of light, a small radiant glow formed in the middle of the cell. As I watched, it rapidly blossomed and expanded until it grew into a large oval. Although it was nothing like the swirling vortex of evil I’d accidently opened (and deliberately closed) between Hell and Heller, I recognized it as a portal between dimensions. But which dimension had decided now was the right time to access ours?
“Dante?” I whispered, suddenly willing to be mentored into the ways and means of Reaperdom.
He shook his head, keeping his eyes trained on the portal. Was something evil coming through? Didn’t we have enough evil right here in suburban Milton’s superjail? I readied my scythe and assumed a fighting stance. The expression on Dante’s face surprised me. He looked . . . hopeful?
The portal stopped growing once it was about the size of a doorway, but unlike the Heller one, this one wasn’t sucking things in. Instead, something came out.
And that something was a beautiful young woman.
She wasn’t tall, standing about my height of five-five. The wings made her look taller. She radiated presence though, along with a shining nimbus of golden light. Her features were fine and even, her crowning glory a fabulous mane of thick red hair twisted into a simple bun. A pearl clasp held it low on her neck. Her emerald eyes seemed kind and intelligent. Even though she was the newcomer, her manner made me feel warm and welcome.
Her most arresting feature, however, were not those on her lovely face, or the nimbus of fire limning her head, but rather the great fiery sword she held like a torch in her left hand.
I loved her on sight. That is, until she swept her gaze right over me and onto . . .
“Dante,” she sighed, laying her right hand over her heart. “How fare thee?”
Figures. This special angel—the wings and the halo were dead giveaways—would know my Reaper.
And boy, did he know her. “Beatrice,” he breathed, going down on one knee before her, clasping her hand and planting a kissing on it, all in one smooth move.
Poetry. Damn. Despite the translator chip in my scythe, I had no ability to comprehend poetry. They might have been setting up a secret assignation right in front of me for all I knew. I stood there bristling, wishing I could get my pal Ira on the line to ask him who the heck glow-in-the-dark Barbie was to my Reaper.
Shannon stepped up, surprising me. “You’ve come to take me to Heaven, haven’t you?”
Beatrice turned her gaze to Shannon, her hand still held by the kneeling Dante. A beatific smile bloomed on her angelic face. “No, child, thy time to enter Heaven hath not yet come.”
Child, huh. She looked about five years younger than Shannon, although come to think of it, age probably worked the same in Heaven as in Hell, so Beatrice could be the same age as Dante. Maybe they’d been alive together. Maybe they’d been lovers.
Dante rose, reluctantly releasing the angel’s hand. “Art thou here on business?”
She now turned her beneficent gaze on me. I ducked my head.
“Thou must be Kirsty. Dante hast waxed poetic about thee. Thou art all things as portrayed by my friend.”
“Uh, thanks.” Her use of “friend” to describe Dante made me feel better. “He told you about me?”
Now Dante blushed and looked away. “I might have.”
A goofy smile spread over my face. I liked this Beatrice. How could I not?
Shannon, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be warming to the angel. “So if not for my soul, then what are you doing here?”
“I am here on a mission of divine mercy. I hath come for her immortal soul.” Beatrice raised the hand not holding the flaming sword, pointing at the frozen tableau in the cell behind us. “Canst thou not discern her goodness?”
A slight glow emanated from Theresa’s chest. As we watched, the glow grew, becoming a bright mist, swirling just above Theresa’s body. It wasn’t like the fiery glow that had become Beatrice’s portal. Nor was it like when a mortal soul popped out of their human body. This was a soul that had finished its rounds on the Coil. It wasn’t going to Hell for reassignment, but to Heaven, the last stop on the merry-go-round of life. Here’s your brass ring, what’s your hurry? Theresa must have accrued the kind of Karmic Kredit the rest of us only dream of.
You might think that I just knew this without having to be told, but actually, we’d covered it during the classroom portion of my Reaper training. Having a fallen angel in your study group lends additional insight.
We waited a few minutes, or whatever was passing for time for us, until the swirl of energy seemed about the size and mass and general outline of a twenty-eight-year-old woman, but it stayed unformed. It wasn’t a person-esque dead soul like you or me.
Okay, just me, then.
“Isn’t it going to coalesce into a, you know, more person-shaped shape?” I asked.
Beatrice shook her head, but her eyes were on Theresa’s swirling soul. “Theresa Mudders. I hath come to escort thou unto Heaven.” She raised the shining sword. “Thou must—
While Theresa Mudders had had boundless patience in life, her spirit was apparently done with that shit. She didn’t bother waiting for Beatrice’s pretty speech. She ducked around our little grouping and shot through the flaming portal into Heaven.
“Well, I never!” Beatrice stared after the dearly departed soul, hands on hips, flaming sword point resting on the ground. She turned back to us with a grimace. “Well, gotta go. Great meeting you, Kirsty. I’ll see you ’round. Say hi to Ira for me. Dante, take care.” She looked at Shannon, a puzzled expression suffusing her angelic face. “You, too. Shannon. Don’t worry. It’ll all work out.”
She gifted us with a last bright smile and vanished into the portal, which winked out of sight instantly, much faster than its dramatic entrance.
“—one can save her now.” The guard finished saying as time kicked back along its ticking path.
Maddy screeched again about being attacked.
Conrad burst free of the guard’s restraining hand and threw himself at Theresa’s body.
The guard dove at him, but he shook her off. He slapped one hand on Theresa’s chest, the other over it. “One, two, three, four, five. Help me here! We can save her!” he shouted between chest compressions.
Instead of trying to pull him off again, the guard who’d restrained Conrad took up the relief position on Theresa’s other side, ready to take over when Conrad’s stolen arms grew tired.
I stepped closer, watching Theresa’s body for signs of life. I didn’t want her revived. She’d gotten in to
