“Don’t they teach you manners in Heaven?” I asked, dropping the shotgun and pulling the Smith from its holster. The angel, leg already healing, started to move toward us until Azrael dropped a hand on his shoulder.
“Go,” he ordered. “Now.” The angel didn’t hesitate, vanishing. Some angels were disagreeing with Azrael, but the ones with him didn’t have that kind of guts. “I apologize.” He didn’t bother to try for a hint of sincerity. “Continue.”
It was the best and quickest way to get rid of him . . . besides shooting him, and while Zeke had nailed the one angel, Azrael was far quicker and more clever than his companion had been. “With Lucifer’s and Hell’s power, Cronus will start taking over every world that exists. He’ll have Hell. Then there’s Heaven, Earth, Tartarus, the Elysian Fields, Hades, Tumulus, thousands of worlds, dimensions, and afterlives. They’ll all fall like dominoes. Who knows in what order? You might get lucky and be far down on the list. But as closely as you are related to demons?” I pretended to give it consideration. “I don’t think so.”
“He is païen. Why do your gods not stop him?” Azrael demanded, his wings reminding me more and more of a cemetery’s weeping angels, the color their wings would turn when Cronus blotted the sun from the sky and ashes would fall instead of rain.
“Because they are gods, what there are left, and he is a Titan. If you don’t know what that means, go home and ask someone who does. We’re rungs on a ladder, you and me, but Cronus is standing on top of Everest.” I used the barrel of the Smith to point to the glittering heap beside him. “If you don’t know that, you’re no more use to Heaven than your friend was.”
Unhelpful to the end, Zeke added, “There’s some superglue in Leo’s office. You know, if you’ve got the time to put the asshole back together.”
Either he didn’t or gluing a shattered angel back together wasn’t an option. “I’ll take this news to my brothers.” Azrael’s human form began to fade to an ice sculpture. “Or I’ll find a Titan and tell him where a demon’s wings can be found. Gold as Solomon’s crown, quite easy to see if one knows where to look.” The ice melted away, leaving his last words behind. “I will return and in a much less forgiving mood.”
Angels, fallen or not, did love to get in the last word.
“Eh, Schwarzenegger said it better and in only three words.” I lowered the Smith after he was gone.
“You think he’ll tell Cronus about Griffin?”
Zeke tried not to sound too concerned, but I would bet my new decorative pile of angel shards that he was thinking about breaking out the handcuffs again. “No, Kit. He’s not putting Cronus one wing closer to Hell, and Griffin’s wouldn’t work anyway. He’s not a demon.” Not that Cronus would be able to tell the difference, but the logic was sound. Azrael was a dick, as Oriphiel before him had been, but he wouldn’t endanger Heaven for vengeance. Anything else, yes, but not Heaven.
But on to business. The plan didn’t stop because a heavenly asshole popped in to make a bad day worse. It only slowed it down slightly.
“All right. Someone grab the DustBuster from my closet and clean up what’s left of Daffy here.” I holstered my gun. It was time to act on what I’d thought earlier. Only a select few could get into Greek Hell now. Hades was dead as were all the Greek gods I knew of except Dionysus, and finding what table he was passed out under would be impossible. The only other free pass into Hell rested with one particular segment of the population—the deceased. “And then let’s find ourselves a medium.”
Chapter 13
The dead . . .
The thing about the dead—how best to put this? Annoying? Yes. Self-centered? Sure. A pain in the ass? Most definitely. But the worst thing about the dead?
They would not shut up.
If you could find yourself a genuine medium and that medium could cast a mental net and snare a human soul still hanging around life like a bad aftertaste—best to pack a lunch, because you were going to be there a long, long time. First they wanted to tell you why they hadn’t gone to the light, and it was usually something so piddly and insignificant that you’d roll your eyes as you ate the tuna fish sandwich you’d made for the trip. It never, contrary to ghost lore, was anything evil. If you were a murderer, you didn’t get to flit around the ether giggling insanely or something equally trite. If you were evil, hell scooped you up in a heartbeat. If your religion had a hell. If you were evil and atheist, too bad, a hell would still get you—it just wouldn’t necessarily be the Christian hell.
After they told you their big sob story, then came the messages. Tell my mother this. Tell my father that. Tell my girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband I love/hate them. One even demanded I tell the post office he was dead, so they could stop his mail. If they were long dead, and everyone they knew was gone as well, then they just wanted to gossip. Did they ever catch Jack the Ripper? The Beatles split up? JFK is dead? Rudolph Valentino? We won World War II? There was a World War II? Did Pet Rocks and leg warmers ever catch on? War of the Worlds was just a hoax? Damn it, I killed myself so the aliens wouldn’t get me.
It was an ordeal. The medium should have to pay a client to sit through it. It was good there were no such things as ghosts that you could see or hear or you’d be nagged by them day and night. Luckily you needed a medium and money to arrange for that irritation and eventually you could leave, slamming the door on their questions, An actor was president? The Terminator is governor? There were certain things impossible to explain to a dead soul, because you couldn’t explain them to yourself.
We stole a car. Leo’s was as dead as they came. Only an automotive medium could help that situation. Mine was lost and Griffin didn’t remember where he’d left his. Head injuries will do that . . . an hour to even days before the smack to the cranium, was gone, maybe forever. When we found a suitable car and it came to the actual stealing part, Zeke unexpectedly balked.
“Stealing is wrong.” He folded his arms in the strip club’s parking lot. The club was three blocks down from the bar. They say don’t piss where you live, but I was in a hurry. This was convenient and quick and I was all about both at the moment. “It’s a rule. Another rule.”
Great. When we could least afford it, Old Testament Zeke was back, somewhat recovered from Griffin’s disappearance. “Didn’t you steal a car to go look for Griffin?” I asked, bending down to take a closer look at the door. How you broke into a car depended on when it was made, if it had an alarm system, if getting in without the key remote meant it would lock up the steering column, and, last but not least—I reached over and opened the door—if it was locked. Yet another good deed on my part. This guy wouldn’t forget to lock his car again. The keys were in the ignition too. I liked convenient, but this wasn’t fun at all.
“Yeah, but rules don’t apply if it’s Griffin.” That was Zeke reasoning for you and I didn’t fault him for it. “When it’s not for Griffin, stealing is wrong.”
“Fair enough. But if the entire world is taken over by Cronus, there’s no telling what will happen to Griffin, and that’s why we’re stealing a car.” I would’ve gone for the good-intentions excuse, but that wasn’t the path to Hell, as they said. It was an express train if you didn’t know what you were doing. Get out your ice skates, because it was a slippery slope if ever there was one. Not to mention I’d seen Griffin literally bang his head against a tabletop at Trixsta trying to get the concept across. Zeke wasn’t ready for good intentions versus future bad outcomes. He was still working on good intentions versus immediate bad outcomes. It was a complicated theory to grasp. I wasn’t completely positive I had the hang of it yet, although it didn’t stop me from a whole lot of practice to prove that theorem.