Earthbound angels trilog.., p.12
Earthbound Angels Trilogy, page 12
I straightened up and wiped the crumbs from the counter off my arms. “Contemplating where to go on my next vacation. Bedlam and I were thinking Greece. We haven’t been there in centuries.”
“You could come with me, if you wanted. I’m going to Ghana to distribute AIDS medication.” His eyes lit up as they said it, but I suspect that had more to do with his trip than the anticipation of my presence. “You could do so much good for these people just by talking to them. You always know what to say, and these people often feel that they have no one to understand their pain.”
“I do not always know what to say. Sometimes I feel like I never do.” Take Bedlam, for one. But I didn’t want to talk to Gabriel about Bedlam.
“You really care about everyone, and that’s exactly what these people need.”
“I wish I could, Gabriel.” And on some level I did. I wished that I could be with Gabriel always, and I wished that I could help these people who so desperately needed it. “But you know that I can’t. When I’m around all those people who are suffering, I get so overwhelmed by all the negative emotions, and I can’t help anyone.”
It made me feel guilty, that I could not get past my own limitations in order to help people who needed it and that I really was far more comfortable in the security of my diner than I was in destinations destroyed by disease, war, and poverty. And if I were being totally honest, part of my reason for saying no was that I had already lived thousands of years without things like running water and air conditioning, and I had no desire to repeat those experiences. Gabriel frowned at my response, and I couldn’t help but feel that he was disappointed in me, for not being able to put my own needs aside in order to help other people.
“I forgot to tell you,” I said, changing the subject. “Keziel had a message for you.”
“She did?” He had been the recipient of many such “messages” before and knew as well as everyone else that they were rarely as urgent as she portrayed them.
“Well, she said she did. But she wouldn’t leave it with me.” I paused, considering. “Whatever it was, it did have her worried. I think she wants to ask you to go back again. To Heaven, I mean.”
Gabriel saddened, as he did whenever he thought about what he left behind in Heaven. “Maybe she’s right. Maybe I should go back. I’ve been away for so long, and I have seen nothing to make me think that my place in the universe should change. Maybe it’s time I admit defeat and go back to doing what I am supposed to.”
“You know I can’t tell you what to do.” I hoped he could not detect that my heart sped up and my breath became a little shallower every time he said that he might return to Heaven. He visited me now, but if he returned to his position as archangel, I would run into him every few centuries at most. More likely Michael would keep him so busy that I would never see him at all. “But you left for a reason, and if you don’t figure out what that reason is and come to terms with it, you are going to be in the same position you were in when you left.”
He gave me a small smile. “You’re right, of course. But sometimes I think that what I want is not nearly so important as what the world needs. And maybe Keziel and Michael are right, and they really need me back, where I can do some real good, not just the little things I do now.”
“First of all, what you do are not little things. I could not possibly count the number of lives you’ve saved—and anyway, you know as well as I do that the value of a single life cannot be measured on some kind of numeric scale. Second, I think you said that Keziel might be right about something, and you know that’s absurd.”
He smiled at me again. He didn’t dislike the female angel as much as I did—he didn’t dislike anyone—but even he knew there was some truth in what I was saying. “Well, it’s getting late, and I have a few things that I want to do before I go to the clinic tomorrow. I’ll probably stop by when I’m done there.”
“I’ll be here.”
As always, I was disappointed to see him go, but now that he was gone—and wouldn’t be back for almost twenty-four hours—it meant I could make another trip to Hell that night, without interference.
Chapter 10
I thought that knowing what was coming for me would make the second trip to Hell easier. I recalled the crushing of all the lost souls and tried to brace myself for a repeat of the inundation. But when I passed through the hellhole the second time, I realized that my memory had been unable to recall the true horror of every tortured soul since the beginning of time forcing the suffering of its existence onto my fragile psyche.
Welcome back to Hell, they whispered.
Some things were easier, though. It did not take me nearly as long to identify the different centers of gravity now that I knew they were the archdemons. I spent some time trying to distinguish them from one another so that, should I need to make multiple trips, at least I would not mistakenly visit the same archdemon twice. Once I had identified the seven different forces, I tried to see if I sensed any differences about them that might help me tell which one was Azrael. But even knowing which was Mephistopheles did not enable me to discern any unique characteristics of each of the locations. I decided I had no choice but to go to each one in turn and hope that Azrael’s came sooner rather than later.
I selected a locus and moved toward it. As before, my body and surroundings slowly solidified until I walked down a corridor similar to the one I had used to reach Mephistopheles. As I moved, my surroundings shifted into other locations, an empty thoroughfare in Rome or the alley behind my diner, but they always settled back into the original candle- and lightning-lit hallway when I tried to focus on any detail.
After a time, I came to a doorway, and when I stepped through, I found myself in the dining room of the gothic mansion. I thought the arrangement of baguettes reminiscent of the customary display at the bakery I worked at in Paris, and the fruits were laid out in the same manner that Gnaeus spread them out for a banquet. I glanced up at the fluorescent lights, thinking they too seemed out of time, but then they were gone, replaced by a chandelier with more than two dozen candles held aloft by ropes of twisted gold. I made out a set of carvings on the mahogany furniture that looked to match the fireplace in Mephistopheles’s library, with faces that seemed to writhe in the flickering light. They even appeared to take on the voices of the tortured souls.
Free us.
The long table was set with fine china and silverware and covered with serving platters bearing the most tantalizing meats imaginable: a turkey stuffed with sage- and marjoram-seasoned breadcrumbs, a roast cooked to pink perfection, and a whole pig complete with a ruby red apple in its mouth. The meats were surrounded by platters overflowing with grapes, peaches, plums, and assorted other juicy fruits, as well as bowls overflowing with potatoes, turnips, and corn. Lining the maroon walls of the room were any number of sideboards brimming with buttery crusted rolls and cakes drizzled with chocolate syrup.
I did not need to see the rotund man sitting at the head of the table to know that I had entered the realm of the archdemon Beelzebub.
I had met Beelzebub only once before, and neither of us had made a positive impression on the other. I was living in a cave near Delphi in Greece, aiding those who came to see me. My name at the time was Corinna, but I was more commonly known in the surrounding regions as the Oracle. History has often confused me with the Pythia of Apollo’s temple, but that was intentional on my part. I had learned the benefits of having a cover “Oracle” who sent me cases that were beyond her abilities.
Weeks could pass between visitors. After living in a crowded area of Egypt, I enjoyed spending the time in solitude. The activities of maintaining a home in a cave took most of my time. I had to keep the fire built at all times if I wanted to eat and not freeze to death. Sometimes I went down to civilization for food, and other times I relied on the hunting skills that I had taught myself the first time I tried to live alone. And on days where my clothes were clean and I had plenty of dry firewood, I sat on the side of the mountain and got lost in thought while I enjoyed the feel of the sun on my skin.
One day, I felt the presence of two angels outside my cave, and as I drew closer, they raised their voices in some kind of argument. One I recognized as Bedlam, who had sought me out in Egypt a few years previously, and the other was a being that I had not previously encountered, though I immediately recognized him as a demon because of his strong and malevolent presence.
I walked to the mouth of the cave and saw Bedlam in conflict with a tall, corpulent man with curly red hair. Given the dark nature of his thoughts, I was surprised to find that his mind, on the surface, appeared like a buoyant light that could not help but shine upon those who came into contact with it. But as I looked closer, I realized that beneath the surface, the demon’s spirit had rotted to the core, so that where it had once spread generosity, it now engendered gluttony in all it encountered.
“… leaving, and you can’t make me stay,” Bedlam was saying as I approached the pair.
The portly man reached out and put a hand on Bedlam’s shoulder. “Be reasonable. I know you’re not necessarily happy with the way things are, but we cannot change that. All of us would like to return to Heaven, but we cannot do that by going off on our own. We must retain some sense of order and decorum.”
“You think this is about getting back into Heaven?” Bedlam yanked his arm out of the other demon’s grasp. “I don’t give an angel’s eyelash about Heaven. Things were just as aggravating back then, with everyone telling me what to do.”
I would ask Bedlam about this later, and he would tell me that the one thing that almost all angels and demons had in common was an overwhelming need to maintain their hierarchy. Each angel knew exactly where he or she was in relation to every other angel above and below him or her, and every angel accepted the right of those above him or her to give orders and expect them to be obeyed. The Fall had, of course, distorted this to some degree, but Lucifer quickly set up a hierarchy with all the demons having a boss to whom they could report, and Michael had taken control of the forces of Heaven and reinforced the hierarchy, gaps and all. Bedlam was the one exception to this, and the smallest thing he did could have the order-obsessed angels in hysterics.
“You know that we give you a lot of leeway.” Beelzebub crossed his arms and gave Bedlam a stern look. “If you don’t want to work with Lethe anymore, maybe we can find something else for you to do. I don’t think that Mephistopheles has had the pleasure of your company for a few centuries now…”
“Seriously, Belsy, why do I have to work with anyone?” Bedlam bounced up and down on his feet like a petulant child. “Not one of you likes me even a little bit. Wouldn’t you all be happier if I went my own way?”
“Because there are only two sides in this war, Bedlam, and you picked yours.”
“The war is over. It’s been over forever. We lost. What you’re fighting is not the continuation of a war. It’s a pathetic attempt to… to… I don’t even know what you’re trying to achieve! Why do we have to be achieving anything anyway?”
Beelzebub glanced in my direction and noticed that I was standing there. “It seems we have company, Bedlam. Is this the… person… you were looking for?”
“Khet!” Bedlam bounded over to me. “Tell Belsy I don’t have to do his evil bidding if I don’t want to!”
“I apologize for the interruption.” The other demon approached me at a much more sedate pace. He gave me a smile, the kind of smile you see on a goat merchant who is about to offer you an unbeatable deal that will result in you owning five goats about to be bleating at death’s door. “My name is Beelzebub, and I’m afraid that my operative has been harassing you unduly. I assure you that this is not the kind of behavior that we ordinarily sanction, and I wanted to come here myself and assure you of that.”
I smiled back at him. “My name is Corinna, and it’s really not a problem. Part of being who and what I am is that people from all walks of life come to me from a variety of locations. I learned to accept that long ago.”
“Well, that’s good to know.” Beelzebub smiled at me, but his eyes remained hard and cold. “Now, the problem we are having here is that Bedlam seems to think that your advice regarding his future holds some weight, and I would appreciate it if you would tell him that it’s really for the best if he return to Hell with me.”
I looked past Bedlam’s smiling façade to the emotions underneath. Oh, please don’t tell me to go back to Hell. They’ll send me back to the Abyss. Dark. Cold. Endless. I’m not doing that again.
Beelzebub, on the other hand, was quite gleeful at the prospect of having Bedlam in his grasp. Oh, come on already and tell him to go away, girl. He’s in for it, this time. Lucifer’s letting me send him so far out he’ll never make it back.
“That’s strange, that you would say that.” I doubt my smile was any more sincere than his. “Because he seems to think that it would not be to his benefit at all.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Beelzebub gave a jolly laugh. “I don’t know what kind of stories he’s been telling you, but I assure you…”
“He has told me nothing,” I allowed my voice to go cold. “If you know who I am, you should know better than to try to fool me. I know what you intend, and I know that you cannot force him to go. If you want someone to endorse your torture methodology, you will have to go elsewhere. I am not in the habit of telling people what to do. However, you did come to ask me for a boon, so I will give you one, though not the one you sought. I will tell you what I see when I look at you. You, like most of your demon kin, claim that you seek a return to your favored positions in Heaven, but you know that this is not true. You know what you would need to do to return to God’s grace; you have always known. Yet instead you continue to fight a war that you lost long ago, using the same tactics that have been unsuccessful time and time again. You cling to the notion that you cannot change, and you continue to dig yourselves deeper into the hole of your own self-pity. And the reason you hate Bedlam so much is not that he does not listen to you but that he questions you. And if you want someone to tell you what to do, then this is what I say: Return to Hell, and never seek a seat around my fire again.”
“Why, you…” The jolly merchant demeanor vanished to be replaced by that of a red-faced drunk, prepared to harm anyone who stood in his way. He lifted a giant fist to strike me.
Bedlam teleported in front of me in time to block him. “Careful, Belsy! You know she’s one of Luci’s deals, and he won’t like it if you touch her!”
Beelzebub growled and menacingly shook his fist at me. “This isn’t over!”
I would have laughed in his face at his clichéd empty threat, but I decided that would worsen the situation. I let him dematerialize in peace.
Bedlam turned around and looked at me, his brow furrowed with concern. “That might not have been the smartest thing you’ve ever done. Belsy only looks cheerful. In reality, he has a vicious temper and a long memory.” Then he brightened and looked at me expectantly. I felt as though I had acquired a new puppy, one with the capacity to make the entire planet stop spinning on its axis. “So… What do you have to do around here? Ooh, I know! There’s a great farm at the bottom of this mountain. Have you ever tipped a cow?”
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t little Corinna, come to see me in my home,” the red-haired demon greeted me. He seemed to have prepared for my arrival, so I assumed that Mephistopheles had been telling tales of my quest. He waved a hand bearing a large turkey leg at the seat next to him. “Please, please, sit! Enjoy the feast.”
Stay forever.
I sat in the chair he indicated, placing the napkin to my left in my lap without thinking. He flourished his haunch of meat over my plate, and the dribbles of grease that fell morphed into my favorite foods: flaky buttermilk biscuits, spinach and mushrooms sautéed in garlic, and roasted lamb with a cherry glaze. The goblet on my right filled with something that appeared to be red wine, though given the company, I would not have been surprised to find that it was the blood of a virgin or something equally disturbing. Under normal circumstances, my mouth would have watered, but the wailing of thousands of dead souls echoing in my head interfered with my appetite. That, combined with the fact that so many mythologies had tales about the perils of consuming anything in the underworld, made me more than a little hesitant to sample any of the bounties before me.
“Now, Corinna, it has been too long since we’ve seen each other. You simply must tell me what you’ve been up to.” As ever, the demon had a jovial expression that served as a skin for his snake-like interior. I could not read his thoughts, but I could see the cold glint in his eye.
One of us.
Based on his geniality, I assumed Beelzebub had decided to play a sort of game with me. He would not break the pretense that I was a welcome guest as long as I did not. Like Mephistopheles’s question game, the ploy lacked originality, but most angels from either side had never been especially concerned about their own triteness. They claimed they were the ones who had made the clichés in the first place.
“Oh, you know.” I struggled to focus on my words and not the cacophony of souls outside. “I’ve been doing… things. Mostly working in bars, but a few decades back, I purchased a diner, and I spend most of my time there.”
Not special.
“A diner?” He laughed in the manner reminiscent of Santa Claus, which was not surprising, given that the Santa myth had many of its roots in the actions of the demon of generosity. I doubt that the Christian groups who note how much Santa and Satan have in common realize how close they are to the truth. Of course, the saccharine Santa who brings presents to good children bears far less resemblance to the original than the pagan myths involving the slaughter of bad children.
