“Wow...” John Fortune said.
The Angel woke from her trance. “Come on!”
She threw open the door and grabbed John Fortune’s arm and hauled him after her, half dragging him as she ran towards the waiting truck, passing bodies, groaning and silent, that littered the ground. The Witness watched her go with his face clenched in pain. He mouthed gibberish at her and tried to crawl toward her and John, but suddenly Ray was between them.
“Back off, asshole,” he said, and the Witness stopped, groveling in the dust.
Ray looked up at her and she saw his face gleaming like a saint’s in an ancient icon.
“Ray—” she said, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to her and covered his mouth with hers. He returned her kiss with equal fervor until the driver shouted out from the cab, “Time enough for that later. We’d best be getting on,” and he gunned his engine for emphasis. He had an English accent.
Ray broke the kiss and looked at her with startled eyes. She looked away, blushing at her terrible boldness. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, but she did know that she’d savor the memory of that kiss for a long time.
“Come on, come on, I ain’t got all night. Manchester United’s on the telly in”—the driver checked the wristwatch on his beefy, hairy forearm—“half an hour and I got a ways to travel to get home.”
The Angel jumped into the cab after John Fortune, and the wheels started rolling as Ray leaped up and slammed the door shut.
“Scoot over,” the trucker said. “There’s room for all.” He concentrated on negotiating the downhill ramp back to the highway and had his rig going eighty by the time they hit the main road again.
He glanced over at the Angel and John Fortune, grinning around his foul-smelling cigar. “I’m John Bruckner,” he said by way of introduction, “Order of the Silver Helix and freelance lorry driver. The call me the Highwayman. I bet you thought we were in for it when those yobbos started shooting?” He patted the dashboard lovingly. “Nah. Not to worry. This is my special rig. All tricked out for those ‘difficult’ deliveries. Hang on, now,” he warned.
The Angel was too dazed to comment as the speedometer crept up to one twenty and then passed it effortlessly.
“Here comes the short cut,” Bruckner called out, and everything shimmered and they were suddenly someplace else
The landscape through which they passed was bizarre. The color of the ground, the quality of the light, the very angles of the cliff-faces and rock formations they flew by were utterly alien. When she saw some of the rocks move as if they were living things, she had to look away. The Angel glanced up at the sky. The sun was green.
“It’s kind of freaky,” Billy Ray said in a low voice, “but don’t worry. Bruckner will get us through.” His hand rested lightly on her left thigh. She put her own down on his, not to remove it, but to enjoy its warmth. Ray smiled crookedly. There was blood on his face, possibly his. She touched his cheek, wiping it away. She laughed.
“What?” Ray asked, frowning.
The Angel shook her head. “I—” It was hard to explain. She gestured all around, at the bizarre landscape, at her companions. “I haven’t felt so good in a long time,” she finally said. “Have I gone crazy?”
Billy Ray grinned. “You think I’m qualified to pass judgement on someone else’s sanity? Me?”
“We’ll see,” she promised.
“Do me a favor, Digger?” Fortunato asked. He and Digger had left Barnett’s headquarters, Fortunato excusing himself with the explanation that he had to get ready for his son’s imminent arrival. But something else was also on his mind.
The reporter looked up from his laptop where he’d been plinking out the latest chapter in the story of Fortunato’s return, using only approximately three fingers on each hand, but still making pretty good time. He was sitting at the desk in their suite in The Angels’ Bower. Fortunato was reclining on one of the semi-comfortable sofas.
“Sure.”
“Keep an eye on me. If it looks like my heart has stopped beating, call for help.”
Digger frowned. “Okay.”
Fortunato went slack as he used almost the last bit of energy stored in his body to go astral. He hovered above his unconscious form for a moment as Downs went quickly to the sofa. The reporter grabbed Fortunato’s wrist, frowning as he felt for a pulse. He released it after a moment, seemingly satisfied but still looking a little shaken, and moved the ace into a more comfortable position on the sofa, with his legs straight out, his head on a pillow, and his hands placed loosely in his lap. Though the result looked like a corpse waiting for a coffin, Fortunato was touched by Downs unexpected solicitousness, and he smiled as he flew through the closed window and out above the Peaceable Kingdom.
Fortunato had never been to a theme park before, so he had no idea how the Kingdom compared to, say, Disneyland. He suspected that they had the same kind of layout. He went a little higher so that the land below him looked like a Monopoly board, the various properties organized to allow for a smooth flow of people from one part of the park to another.
He’d glanced through the Kingdom’s brochures to familiarize himself with the lay of the land, so at least he knew what he was looking at. In front, to his right, was New Jerusalem, Barnett’s somewhat sanitary reproduction of a portion of that ancient city, containing all the locales relevant to Christ’s life and death—the Via Dolorossa, the Plain of Golgotha, even the rock-hewn Tomb of the Sepulcher—but condensed for the tourist’s convenience. There were also plenty of souvenir shops where T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and necklaces of rough-forged nails like those that pinned Christ to the cross could be purchased.
To his left was Rome of the Martyrs, including a scaled-down version of the Coliseum where various amusements were held, though no Christians were thrown to lions. All entertainments, the brochures said, were in good taste with no blood spilt, but one could still get an idea of the decadent and debauched practices of the pagan Romans. The underground Catacombs, which were obviously not visible from Fortunato’s viewpoint, came complete with grisly scenarios depicting the lives and deaths of the Martyrs, and were also quite popular.
Behind him was Medieval Land and the Vault of Heaven, all with attendant stores, restaurants, amenities, shops, and rides, but something drew Fortunato forward, to the Coliseum-dominated Rome of the Martyrs, as if what he needed could be found there.
He flew between the guardian statues of the Apostles, three each guarding a quadrant of the Kingdom. Something was calling him. It wasn’t the sounds made by the five thousand people attending the revival or seminar or whatever was taking place in the scaled-down Coliseum. It was the promise of energy that saturated the air. As he hovered over the center of the open-roofed structure, he was astonished to see that everyone, all five thousand or so attendees, were women. They ranged from the young to the old. They were all fairly well if not fairly tastefully dressed. They were virtually all white, but Fortunato could remember few Asian faces among the tourists, and even fewer Black. The fact that they were all women seemed somehow appropriate, as if he’d come full circle. Once he’d derived all his power from women. Now perhaps he would again.
His astral form hovered in the air above the Coliseum. A wooden platform below him bore a podium draped with banners proclaiming MAGOG—Mothers Against Gods or Goddesses—in intricate letters. A woman stood behind the podium, leading them all in song. She was flanked on either side by delegates in folding chairs. He didn’t know what the song was, but by its lugubrious tones and solemn, dirge-like beat, he assumed that it was a hymn. After the song ended, the woman standing behind the podium spoke, but Fortunato didn’t listen to her. He had other concerns.