“But if I don’t save the world, God will damn me to Hell for all eternity. That doesn’t seem like Free Will.”
“But remember Metatron said your intentions do not matter, only results. You are not required to try to save the world—”
“Uriel!” Michael howled.
Uriel placed his hand up, communicating for Michael to shut up. “Do not tell me how to do my job, Michael . . . As I was saying Jocelyn, what do you think will happen if you do not try to save the world?”
“I will go to Hell when I die.” She bit her lip and conjured up The Universe Thoth Tarot Card and placed it near her pentacle in front of Uriel. Another name for the Universe card is the World card. It must represent her quest to save the world.
“But what if you cannot save the world? Or, more important, what if the world is saved without your help? What then?”
“Well, if intentions don’t matter,” Jocelyn responded to Uriel, “then I will go to Hell if no one saves the world, but I will not if anyone does.”
“Okay, when, precisely, do we know the world has not been saved?”
“I don’t follow.”
“I can help here,” Raphael said.
“Oh, not you, too!” Michael was fuming. Raphael ignored him.
“Jocelyn, under what conditions do you believe all hope would be lost, that there was no hope in saving the world.”
She conjured up The Priestess Thoth Tarot Card and placed it on the altar next to her chalice in front of Gabriel, and she realized that she herself was a Priestess of a type, influencing the world.
She thought for a few seconds about what Raphael had said. Of course. “When all of humanity have become draugar. Then no one would remain to fix anything.”
“And when will that happen?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I will rephrase,” Raphael said. “Is it possible for that to happen at all?”
She thought about this for a while. “It can’t happen while I’m alive.”
“Precisely,” Uriel said. “You do not have to attempt to save the world. You only have to survive.”
“But I’m not immortal. Eventually I will die, right?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Uriel said. “But that is a long way off.”
“Wait, what if there are space aliens?”
“Now you are thinking,” Raphael said.
“If all of humanity are draugar, and I’m dead, there’s still hope, right? If there are space aliens? Maybe they could find a way to cure all the draugar?”
“And what,” Raphael asked, “do you think would happen to you if that were the case?”
“I couldn’t go to Hell.”
Jocelyn needed a stiff drink. She conjured up a dry martini into her chalice. She drank half, and it started to take effect, though only on the astral plane.
“No,” said Uriel. “You could not. The worst that could happen is purgatory, and it would seem you are in a kind of purgatory right now. You can stay here, or . . .”
Clearly, he wanted Jocelyn to finish the sentence. “Or try to get out by saving the world.”
“Now you understand. You do not have to let anyone influence your decision. In fact, you should not.”
“But I can’t just stand by while all of humanity turns into draugar!”
“Why not?”
“Because I just can’t!”
“You mean you do not want to. You can, but you do not want to.”
“Huh . . . I believe I understand . . . It is unthinkable for me not to try to save the world. What else would I do?”
“And that, Michael, is how you ‘win friends and influence people.’”
Michael scowled. “I will admit there is no one better at it than you. Especially when you team up with Raphael.”
Something suddenly dawned on Jocelyn. “So there actually are space aliens?”
“Yes,” answered Raphael. “With spaceships, time travel, the whole ‘package deal.’”
“So could they actually help?”
“Probably,” Michael said. “I wish you luck in your efforts to convince any of them to do that.”
“So, what am I now, unconscious?”
“Unconscious,” Michael answered.
“But eventually I will wake up?”
“Eventually.”
“Where am I?”
“See for yourself. Conjure up a screen and look.”
She looked at the lattice of mirrors. She utilized a section to show her physical body. It had never occurred to her before that she could do that.
There she was, lying on the asphalt. She panned around her body so she could take in the whole scene. The roadblock was gone. Maybe a hundred bullet holes riddled the van, and there was no sign of anyone, except for Vin, who laid on the ground near the van with a large, thick pool of blood that had oozed out from beneath his body. She tried to look inside the van, but she had no such luck. It seemed she could only see her body and what was around it, as if a camera were fixed on the perimeter of a sphere about ten feet away from her.
They had left her and Vin for dead.
Since the others wouldn’t just abandon their bodies, she could only infer that her erstwhile companions were under duress—or dead themselves. But she would have to wake up to see if anyone else was deceased on the scene.
“When will I wake up?” she asked, looking past Raphael, staring at her body.
“Soon,” Michael answered. “In the meantime . . .” He waved his hand. “Take another drink.”
She found her chalice was full and drank deeply. She had to decide whether to go after her compatriots or continue on to Colorado Springs.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Day Nine
The Führer didn’t live up to the build-up. He was a middle-aged skinhead—Marty judged him to be about fifty—and with the five o’clock shadow on his head, he saw the Führer was suffering from male-pattern baldness. He bore a swastika on his forehead, like the others, with a horizontal bar on top. To the left as you faced him were four vertical lines with two horizontal lines through them all. He wore nondescript blue jeans
