Happy Hour in Hell

two: five angry angels

I’D BEEN called to Heaven, specifically to the Anaktoron, the great council chamber I had visited once before, an astounding architectural impossibility with cloud-high ceilings, a floating table of black stone and a river running right through the middle of the floor. My archangel, Temuel (sort of my supervisor) brought me into the mighty building and then discreetly retired. Floating on the far side of the stone table, as if someone had jerked away a candelabrum and left the candle flames burning in midair, were the ephors, my five special inquisitors.

“God loves you, Angel Doloriel,” declared the filmy white flame that was Terentia. “This Ephorate welcomes you.” Like the first time I’d met them, Terentia seemed to be the one in charge, although I knew that Karael, the warrior-angel beside her, was about as high as anyone can get in the hierarchy of the Third Sphere (everything to do with Earth and its inhabitants). Beside him hovered Chamuel, a mist that gleamed from within, and next to Chamuel was Anaita, a childlike presence that I knew from unpleasant experience could be as coldly formal as Terentia. At the edge of the group was Raziel, a being of dim red light who was neither male nor female. All of these important angels were Principalities, the judges of the dead and the living. There is no higher rank among the angels in our sphere.

I returned Terentia’s greeting, trying not to look like I was waiting for my blindfold and cigarette. “How can I serve you, Masters?”

“With the truth,” said Chamuel, but almost kindly. “These are great matters in which you have been caught up, Doloriel. Dangerous matters. And we wish to hear of them from your own lips.”

Yeah? And what would you know about lips? I wondered, since Chamuel’s form was indistinct as a rain cloud. I’m not entirely stupid, though, so I only bowed my head. “Of course.”

And so the ephors asked, and I answered. I tried to tell the truth when I could (it makes keeping track of the lies easier) but there were just too darn many things I didn’t dare mention, too many laws of Heaven that I had stomped all over while trying to get to the bottom of the whole mess. They knew that my demon-lover Caz had given me information but they definitely didn’t know what else had happened between us, which was good, because I was pretty sure fraternizing with the enemy was a capital offense in the angel business, and I had gone a lot farther than “fraternizing.” They also knew that my buddy and partner Sam Riley, aka Advocate Angel Sammariel, had been secretly working for a group that hijacked souls belonging to either Heaven or Hell and offered them instead a “Third Way” that both sides of the ancient struggle were pretty eager to obliterate. They also knew Sam had escaped, but luckily they hadn’t found out it was because I’d let him go. (They also didn’t know that he’d had offered to take me with him to the Third Way’s new-minted afterworld. I still thought about that sometimes.)

As I think I said, I’ve never just stood up and lied to Heaven before. I’ve kept many a not-very-angelic thought to myself, of course, but I always told the truth about what I was doing and whom I was doing it with. But the last couple of months had changed all that: truth was no longer an option. If my bosses found out what I’d done I’d be sentenced to the nastiest pits of Hell or, if I was lucky, I’d just have my memory wiped and start over again, another fledgling angel learning how to keep his robe clean and sing Hosanna. So I lied and kept on lying.

“. . . As for the last part, well, it’s all in my report.”

“Which we have absorbed with interest,” said Terentia. “But we have called you here so you can relate your experiences again, and perhaps, with our help, discover details which were inadvertently left out of your report.”

How could a guy resist such thoughtfulness? “Well, as I said, when the monster attacked me in the abandoned amusement park, Angel Sammariel took advantage of the distraction to escape. I didn’t see where he went. By the time the ghallu was dead, there was no sign of him.” (Fighting the monstrous ancient demon—and almost being swallowed by it—had definitely happened, I promise you. It was the oops-Sam-got-away part that hadn’t.)

Raziel’s dark light grew darker for a moment, like a thunderstorm starting to roll. “But both you and Angel Haraheliel were together after the creature of the pit was dead, or nearly so. He says he was struck by one of the creature’s death-throes, but before he was rendered senseless he confronted Sammariel. These conflicts confuse us.”

A silence fell between the boss angels; I had the disturbing sense of things flying past above my head, of conversations I couldn’t hear but which would determine my fate whether I liked it or not. Haraheliel was the real angelic name of rookie advocate (and company spy) Clarence, and trying to make the kid’s report jibe with my invented recollections was one of my major challenges.

“I’m sorry, Master,” I said quickly. “You’re right, of course. When I said ‘attacked,’ I meant the creature’s last movements. I thought it was dead. It lay still for a long time, but then it stunned Angel Haraheliel with its leg and started to get up again. I fired my last bullets into it, and it finally stopped moving.” I was praying—ironic, no?—that I was remembering the details right, or at least the details of the version I’d submitted to Heaven’s auditors. I had been studying my report and Clarence’s for days, like a panicked freshman in finals week. I’ve got a pretty good memory, but being here in the Anaktoron would be enough to make Einstein put his fingers to his lips and go bblbblbblbbl. “Then, when I looked up, Angel Haraheliel was unconscious and Sam—Angel Sammariel—was gone.” I was tempted to prattle on, reemphasizing all the important points, but instead I clamped my mouth shut and waited. Again the awesome, nerve-wracking silence. Moments only, but a moment in Heaven can literally seem like hours.

“Another thing that has been puzzling me, Angel Doloriel,” said Anaita in her sweet, childlike voice. “How was it that you were able to defeat a creature of Old Night with nothing more than silver bullets? It seems strange that such a mighty enemy should be dispatched as easily as one of the Adversary’s foot soldiers.”

Because the silver I put into the monster at the end was more than just any old silver. It was a gift to me from Caz, a tiny silver locket, the only precious object that remained from her life as a human woman. And it was given to me with love, I’m convinced of that. The fact that a monster from the depths of time had died from that fragile little bit of silver but had laughed off all the earlier silver slugs was one of the biggest reasons that I didn’t believe what happened between Caz and me had been mere infernal seduction. But I could no more admit that to the ephors than I could claim that God Himself came down in a fiery chariot and crushed the ghallu beneath its wheels.

“I still don’t know,” I said as humbly as I could. “I put quite a few silver bullets in it during the course of perhaps two hours. At the end . . . it seemed to be laboring.” Which was a lie. Until I used Caz’s locket, the thing had swallowed silver rounds like they were lemon drops. “Perhaps . . . I . . .” If I had been breathing, I would have stopped to take a deep, deep breath, because I had no good answer, and I was just plain scared. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Don’t underestimate an angel of the Lord,” said Karael suddenly. He was talking so I could hear him, but he was clearly saying it for the benefit of his fellow ephors. “Angel Doloriel was trained as a member of Counterstrike Unit Lyrae to resist the enemies of Heaven, and those angels are as brave and tough a group as we have. I have fought many times beside our Counterstrike Units. If anyone could bring down a creature of such ancient, evil lineage, it would be a CU veteran. Isn’t that right, Doloriel?”

I could have kissed him, I swear. I could have wrapped my arms around his fiery, beautiful awesomeness and planted one right on him. “We . . . we do our best, sir. We always do our best.”

“Exactly. Doloriel was a Harp.” The way Karael said it, it seemed to roll and echo through the great council chamber. “One of those courageous souls who defend the walls of Heaven itself—even if the ones they protect do not always remember. That means something.”

So was Karael trying to get me off the hook simply because he didn’t like to see the angelic equivalent of ex-military being run down by the bureaucrats? Or was there something else going on? Shit, who was I kidding? In Heaven there’s always something else going on.

“Of course, noble Karael,” said Terentia, again speaking so I could hear. “But this angel left the Lyrae, did he not?”

I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and that scared me all over again. Why were the top brass arguing in front of me, a mere foot soldier? It didn’t make sense.

“Doloriel left Counterstrike because he was gravely wounded in a battle with Hell’s forces.” Karael almost sounded defensive.

“And now he serves the will of the Highest as a member of His holy advocates,” said genderless Raziel in a voice like quiet music. “Defending the souls of the worthy from the lies and trickery of Hell.”

“Perhaps,” Anaita replied. “But it was one of those selfsame advocates who conspired with members of the Opposition to create this wretched Third Way, causing all the trouble in the first place. And while there is no doubt that Angel Doloriel has been a brave fighter and an effective advocate, no one could dispute the fact that he seems to . . . attract trouble.”

“It is true,” said Raziel slowly, “that there have been times since I created the Advocacy when I wonder if we are asking too much of the Elect, requiring them to take on earthly bodies again, exposing them to all the temptations and despair that beset the living every day on Earth.”

They fell into silent conversation again, which was just as well because I must have been gaping like someone had broken a bottle over my head. Raziel created the Advocates? I had never heard that. In fact, I had never heard anything to suggest our existence came from anything less than a divine order from the Highest Himself. How important were these five angels? And why were they spending so much time with little Bobby Dollar?

Then an idea came to me, stealing over me like a fog, sending chills up and down my non-corporeal form. Something was going on here far beyond a fact-finding meeting, or even a meeting about something as important to these high angels as the renegades of the Third Way. Sam had told me that he’d been approached by a disguised angel that called itself Kephas, and everything about Kephas had suggested powers beyond that of Heaven’s rank and file, including the God Glove it had given Sam, a device or power or whatever it was that had allowed him to do so many unexpected things. Might Kephas, the revolutionary behind the Third Way, be a high angel like this quintet of ephors? Or, even weirder and more disturbing, was Kephas one of the Furious Five themselves?

The games they play in Heaven are incredibly subtle, but they’re still deadly—no, worse than deadly, because the loser’s lot is an eternity bathing in fire. What was I caught up in? And how was I going to avoid becoming a Bobby-colored smear in the grinding gears of heavenly politics?

“Angel Doloriel,” said Terentia suddenly, breaking into my thoughts so abruptly that I almost squeaked in terror. I’m glad I didn’t, since angels usually don’t squeak.

“Yes, Mistress?”

“We must consider all you have told us. We will speak to you again. Be ready for a summons.”

And just like that it was all gone, the fiery ephors and the gleaming magnificence of the Anaktoron’s council chamber, and I was back in bed in my miserable apartment once more, back in my miserable, shivering human body. It was still dark outside, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep.