I didn’t argue the point. I couldn’t. He was right; I was.
“The question you need to ask yourself is, a reprieve from what? A wise man who lived and died not far from here once said the only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life — your memories, your attachments. That by burning them away, hell is not punishing you, it’s freeing your soul. So perhaps, Sam, all you need to do for your reprieve is to let go.”
“That’s a nice speech,” I told him, “but I think I’ll take my chances with the high road.”
“You could,” he said lightly. “You surely could. But think on this: Lilith was the first woman in all Creation, the first of your precious Maker’s pets to fall from grace. If it took Him this long to get around to redeeming her, how long do you figure it’ll be before you get your turn?”
“I’m okay with waiting,” I replied.
“Really?” he asked, smiling brightly. “I’ve never thought of patience as one of your strongest suits. Nor do I consider it a virtue. If you ask me, patience is a sign of weakness, an unwillingness to pursue that which you desire.”
“Maybe,” I said, “or maybe that which I desire is best obtained by not pursuing it.”
The boy rolled his eyes. “Fuck — five minutes with that damn-fool monk Thomed, and already you’re spouting nonsense Zen koans. You know he’s crazier than a shithouse rat, don’t you?” I opened my mouth to object, but he placated me with raised palms. “Okay, okay, say for the sake of argument you’re right. That your Maker has a plan for you after all. Maybe what you should ask yourself is why should you assume His plan is worth a damn?”
“Come again?”
“Think about it. If all you’ve experienced to this point has been your Maker’s preposterous Rube Goldberg plan to redeem His very first lost soul, doesn’t that make you nothing more than a patsy? A bit player? A hapless pawn in a rigged game that placed heaven and hell at odds with one another and resulted in no shortage of suffering for you and those you love? If your Maker has a plan, then every awful aspect of your life was ordained before you were even born, dictated by the petty whims of a power-mad deity bent on forever pushing the limits of his poor, pathetic subjects just to see what makes them break — like some fucking hard-hearted toddler standing above an anthill with a magnifying glass. If your Maker has a plan, then it was His plan, and not simply those strikebreakers, who shattered your knee and rendered you unemployable. It was His plan, not random chance, that caused your beloved Elizabeth to contract tuberculosis. It was His plan that you take Dumas’s deal and give your soul over to the likes of me. His plan that drove your wife from you, and resulted in her granddaughter and her family getting slaughtered at the hands of a rogue angel. Hell, that resulted in the Flood that so pissed off Lilith in the first place. And if your Maker truly is both omniscient and omnipotent, how do you square the horrors that brought you to this very patch of ground so many years ago? Why would a loving God allow Hitler to live at all? Allow millions to suffer and die at his hands?”
“Seems to me free will’s to blame for most of the horrors in this world. Free will, and maybe you.”
“Sam, that hurts, particularly because you show such promise, such verve. I don’t deign to visit all my charges, you know — just the ones in whose future I see great things. I’d hate to see you squander such potential sitting around, waiting for the phone to ring. Perhaps your Maker will finally get around to redeeming you a million years from now; perhaps not. But what I offer you is concrete. It’s here-and-now. And it’s there for you whenever you decide.”
“What exactly are you offering me?”
“I’m offering you a seat at the table. A chance to make a difference — to serve as trusted council for yours truly, and as a guide to those like you who’ve suffered the misfortune of somehow offending their mercurial Maker. Perhaps under your tutelage, they need not find their path so rocky.”
“And if I say no — what then?”
The boy smiled. “You mean how will you be punished? You misunderstand my offer, Sam. If you say no, I’ll simply ask again. And again. And again. A million years is a long time to keep on asking, and affords countless chances for you to tell me yes.”
Just then, a woman’s voice called from a balcony above. “Sven? Sven, wo bist du?”
The boy’s smile faded, replaced by sudden confusion. He shook his head in puzzlement, and muttered something that sounded like a sneeze, which I assumed was German for “excuse me”. Then he turned and trotted across the square toward the building from which he called, the boy a boy once more, the Devil inside him gone.
I was alone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
You’ll note that as this series goes on, these acknowledgments ain’t getting any shorter. If you people don’t cut it out with all your love and support, I’m gonna end up way too cheery to write these things. So if book four finds Sam eating his way through Tuscany and relearning how to love, remember: it’s on you.
Thanks to Marc Gascoigne, Lee Harris, and the whole Angry Robot crew for making my Collector novels the best versions of themselves. Thanks as well to Martin Stiff and Amazing 15 Design for turning Marc’s brilliant cover concept into the best pulp covers in the business.
The following folks are but a few who’ve lent me a hand along the way: John Anealio, Josh Atkins, Jedidiah Ayres, Patrick Shawn Bagley, Frank Bill, Nigel Bird, Stephen Blackmoore, Jerry Bloomfield, Judy Bobalik, Paul D. Brazill, Drew Broussard, R. Thomas Brown, Kristin Centorcelli, Joelle Charbonneau, Sean Chercover, Adam Christopher, David Cranmer, the Cressey clan, my fellow Criminal Minds bloggers, Sean Cummings, Laura K. Curtis, Paul and Sarah Damaske, Hilary Davidson, Vanessa Delamare, Neliza Drew, Jacques Filippi, Sarah Fischer, Renee Fountain, Cullen Gallagher, Victor Gischler (who, it should be noted, supplied the name for Admiral Fuzzybutt), Kent Gowran, Guy Haley, Rob W. Hart, Janet Hutchings, Julie Hyzy, Abhinav Jain, Sally Janin, Jon and Ruth Jordan, John Kenyon, Larry Killian, Owen Laukkanen, Jennifer Lawrence, Benoit Lelievre, Ben LeRoy, Sophie Littlefield, Jeremy Lynch, Jennifer MacRostie, Sarajean Malpica, Dan and Kate Malmon, Erin Mitchell, Scott Montgomery, Micah Morris, Joe Myers, Stuart Neville, Lauren O'Brien, Sabrina Ogden, Dan O'Shea, Miranda Parker, Brad Parks, Todd Robinson, Linda Rodriguez, Ian Rogers, Melanie Sanderson, Ryan Sayles, Brandon Sears, Kieran Shea, Julia Spencer-Fleming (and her husband Ross), Josh Stallings, David Swinson, Brian Vander Ark, Meineke van der Salm, Steve Weddle, Chuck Wendig, Elizabeth A. White, and Shaun Young.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank my family — Holm, Burns, and Niidas — for their unflagging enthusiasm and support; anyone within earshot of them knows they peddle my books with impunity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris F. Holm was born in Syracuse, New York, the grandson of a cop with a penchant for crime fiction. He wrote his first story at the age of six. It got him sent to the principal’s office. Since then, his work has fared better, appearing in such publications as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Needle Magazine, Beat to a Pulp, and Thuglit.
He’s been a Derringer Award finalist and a Spinetingler Award winner, and he’s also written a novel or two. He lives on the coast of Maine with his lovely wife and a noisy, noisy cat.