Sleeping Late on Judgement Day

forty-eight: one tick away

OKAY, HERE’S something you may not have known: apparently dead people dream.

How did I know I was dead? Well, unless it’s ever happened to you (and you were an angel at the time, like I was) it’s hard to explain. Basically, there was a brief moment when all the lights went out, the party was over, and I could no longer feel the breath of the Highest whispering in my blood. I can’t explain it any better than that.

So I know for sure I was dead. What I don’t know is how I came back to life in the same body. But I’ll get to that in a moment. As for the dreaming part . . .

It was Caz, but somehow I was seeing through her eyes. And I thought she must be in Hell, because all I saw was fire and smoke and hopeless faces. She was stumbling past them and the owners of those faces kept trying to grab at her, to pull her down, but she fought past them and out into a swirling nothingness. Suddenly there was a line of fire in front of her, and then something else was there—something big. Something powerful. Something that had come for her and her alone. It raised its hand . . .

And I woke up. Shouting. Thrashing, trying to help her, save her, but I was restrained.

No. Only restrained on one side. And not exactly restrained, either. Somebody was holding my hand.

“Bobby. It’s okay. You’re in the hospital. Don’t fight, you’ll tear out the stitches!”

It took me a long moment to focus. Part of me was still seeing that sparking hole in the air, the huge dark shape stepping through to take Caz. “Clarence?”

“Shit.” He almost smiled, but he looked worried. “I guess even almost dying isn’t going to get you to use my real name, is it?”

“Almost?” I fell back against the pillow, or at least something shaped like a pillow, but with no actual pillow-ish qualities like softness or comfort. “Are you sure?” I couldn’t understand what I was doing here. “Are you still holding my hand?”

“Does it make you nervous?”

“No, I was just checking. I’m trying to figure out what’s what.” What’s what included a standard-issue hospital room with the window blinds shut and everything around me the same institutional beige color. “Why am I alive?”

“Because God loves you?”

I was tired already and wanted to go back to sleep, to drop into darkness where I could at least dream about Caz. “Could be. Or maybe it’s more of a curse than a reward.” I felt like the hacked remains of a Thanksgiving turkey. I swear I could feel places where the neo-Nazi bastard’s knife had scraped the bones in my chest on its way to my vital organs. “The guy who stabbed me?”

“Dead. Very dead. Name was Geoffrey something. One of the Black Sun guys.”

“Yeah. I recognized him.” I was feeling waves of weariness now. “What’s the news? How long have I been out?”

“A good while—several days. The doctors barely saved you. Monica and a bunch of others have been here a couple of times to see you, but you were unconscious, full of tubes, and not much fun. As far as how things are going, Heaven-wise, pretty much the same. Still the big hush-hush about you-know-who.”

“I wish they’d give her a golden parachute. A real one. Let her try to use it from high Earth orbit.” I changed my position on the bed. It hurt, but not so badly that I couldn’t feel my body already healing itself. Soon I’d be back to normal in a world without Sam and Caz or any point at all. Fucking Heaven. They’d found the best way to punish me. Simply keep me alive and stupid and suffering forever.

Clarence squeezed my hand and then let go. “I’m so sorry, Bobby. About Sam. Do you think there’s any chance he’ll be back?”

“He sure didn’t think so.”

After a short silence, he said, “I miss him too, you know. A lot.”

I almost said something sarcastic, but the impulse just evaporated. “I know, kid. He really liked you, and that wasn’t all that common with him.”

“Sam spent a lot of time with me in the last few months. It was like he was coaching me to take over for him. I think maybe he had a feeling. That something would happen.”

“Coaching you to what? Say that again.”

The kid looked embarrassed. “He knew you’d need a partner. Someone to watch your back.”

I gave him a long look. Sam was right, of course. Sometimes I’m a half-empty balloon, but sometimes I’m a kite. It’s nice to have someone around who knows when to grab the string and keep me anchored. “We’ll see.”

“Or, if you’d rather start interviewing other applicants, I’ll let G-Man know.”

“Fuck you. I’m not that happy about being alive, so don’t you dare make me laugh. It feels like I’ve got stitches holding my stitches together. I still want to know why I’m not a corpse. And don’t tell me it’s because God loves me.”

“Okay, I won’t.” Clarence smiled and stood up. “But you ought to at least entertain the possibility.”

“You’re dead to me, Harrison. Dead.”

“And you’re alive, Bobby, whether it’s convenient or not. See you visiting hours tomorrow.”

I almost let him get out the door before I remembered. “Hey, Junior.”

“What?”

“Just wanted to check something. Samkiel, right?”

“Sorry?”

“The guy who sent you for training, an archangel. Samkiel, that was his name, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He gave me a look. “What made you think of that?”

“Nothing. Next time you come back, bring alcohol.”

“Not happening, B.” He went out, closing the door quietly, as if loud noises might be particularly upsetting to the recently dead. Because I had been dead, or at least as dead as an angel ever gets, I was sure of that, but here I still was, and I hadn’t even been recycled into a new body.

The things I’d been considering when the guy with the knife jumped me on my doorstep were coming back to me, definitely including my most recent conversation with Gustibus. But I was tired from being awake, worn out just from that little give-and-take with Clarence, so I didn’t get much thinking done before I was asleep again.

• • •

I was standing in the middle of so much beauty that even the hardest of hearts would have broken, even the most stiff-necked would have bowed his head, but even in the middle of the Elysian Fields, with the shining towers of the Celestial City on view before me, I felt oddly hollow.

Angel Doloriel, a voice boomed, filling the green world with implied echoes, although only I heard the words. You are wanted in Heaven.

I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t come here by my own choice, so I had been expecting a summons. I could have taken the slow way and appreciated the glory that was Humanity Beyond Death, the contented souls in the Lord’s fields and the tuneful, heart-healing songs of the Choir Invisible, but I was tired—not body-tired, but soul-tired, which is deeper. I let myself be carried directly to whatever fate was waiting for me.

I found myself somewhere I’d never been before. From the way the light fell (or didn’t fall—it’s hard to explain) I was pretty sure I was actually within the Heavenly City, but it felt like a part where I’d never been before. For a moment I wondered if I’d finally made it into the Empyrean, the center of everything, forbidden to the rank and file, but I guess I’ll never know. All I could say for certain was that it was a place that felt both indoor and outdoor at the same time, with the silence and solemnity of a crypt under a cathedral, but the airiness of a tent on a windy hillside. The walls even seemed to be some kind of fabric, light as cloud, moving in a breeze I couldn’t actually feel. Except for the intimations of size and the heavenly light, it could have been the field headquarters of an important general. Which gave me a clue about who I was going to see.

“Angel Doloriel. God loves you.”

I found myself facing a figure wrapped in brilliance. The angel was seated, but on what I couldn’t see, and although I couldn’t make out face or features, only a manlike shape of light and cloud, the voice confirmed my guess. “Lord Karael. You called me?”

“Come here, son.” A moment later I was much closer, and also seated, but as with the Angel Militant himself, I couldn’t tell if I was on a throne or a camp stool or somehow perched in midair. “You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?”

“With respect, Master, yes, I have.”

“And now someone else has tried to kill you. How fortunate he failed. These mortals are stubborn things.” Karael smiled. I don’t know how I knew that, since he didn’t really have a face I could make out, but I felt it like a curtain pulled back a bit to let the sunshine through. “Believe it or not, Doloriel, not everyone in Heaven is out to get you,” he said. “Some of us admire your intelligence and your—how shall I put it? Your determination. And, of course, some don’t.”

“Anaita would be one of those, I guess.”

A cloud rolled in front of the sun, or the curtain fell closed again. “We don’t really need to talk about her. Nobody is proud of what she did or how far it got. But you don’t have to take the blame for that any longer.”

“I don’t?”

“No, sir. You, son, are even going to be rewarded a bit. From now on, consider yourself restored to duty and cleared of charges. But that duty will only be half-time for as long as we need until you’re back to your old troublemaking self. We’ll make sure the San Judas central office has its caseload covered.” He said it with such an air of generous, cheerful finality that he might have been God explaining to Adam about how this direction was going to be called “up” and the opposite would be named “down.”

“Thank you, Lord Karael.”

“You don’t have to keep calling me “lord,” son. I’m not the Highest. I’m just one of his faithful servants. Please, call me Karael.”

“Okay. But can I ask a few questions?”

“Of course.” He spread his glowing arms expansively, but with the kind of grace that reminds you why angels are angels. “You’ve earned it.”

“What about my trial?”

“It will be as if it never happened. We’ve announced that the whole thing was Anaita’s deliberate attempt to confuse and mislead.”

“Wow. Thanks. That’s a huge load off my mind. And Anaita herself?”

Karael went a little bit cloudy for a moment. He might have been shaking his head in sadness, not in anger. If he’d had a head instead of just a vaguely head-shaped glow, that is. “She will be punished, don’t you worry about that.”

“Yes, but did she explain why she did some of those things? Because a lot of what happened doesn’t really make sense.”

For a moment he seemed oddly still. “Like what, son?”

“Well, I don’t want to waste your time. I know you must be very busy. Are you in charge of my part of Earth now that Anaita’s out of the picture?”

“The division of duties in the Third Sphere is a great deal more complicated than that, but I suppose the simple answer is yes.” A thin beam of sunshine. “I suppose I’m your boss now. But of course the hierarchy remains the same. You’ll still report to—”

“Temuel,” I said, cutting him off. “Right?”

“Right.” He hadn’t liked being interrupted. “So, if there’s nothing more, Doloriel, then I will send you back and get on with some of that new business waiting for me.”

“If you have another moment, sir, I didn’t finish telling you some of the things that didn’t make sense. See, it was all weird from the very beginning. Like when the souls first began disappearing—the ones we found out later went to Kainos? Edward Walker was the very first one, and I was there right after he killed himself. I was with Hell’s prosecutor, Grasswax.”

“Grasswax. The one who was butchered by Eligor over the feather.”

It was very strange sitting with a powerful angel, discussing secrets that only a few days ago had still been getting people ripped to pieces or sent to Hell—or both. “Yes, that’s the one, sir. But the weird thing was, when the first soul went missing, Grasswax and I weren’t the only folks from our two sides who showed up. In fact, it was like someone pulled a fire alarm. Almost as soon as we noticed that the soul was missing, angels and demons were all over the place.”

The airiness and light got a little roiled. “Hmmm. Interesting point. Why would Anaita do that? Why risk her entire plan by bringing in extra scrutiny and more witnesses so soon?”

“Exactly.”

“I imagine it was Eligor,” Karael said after a moment. “Just because he had a bargain with her doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try to make things difficult for her. He is a Grand Duke of Hell, after all.”

“Good point, sir. Which leads me to the next question. I spent a lot of time thinking about how the bargain worked, Anaita’s feather for Eligor’s horn, and how Anaita kept it hidden, and what she wanted to do.”

“Which was to be worshipped, to be simplistic about it.” Karael’s voice took on a tone of disapproval. “She never got past her origins. She didn’t truly appreciate the Divine Plan.”

“Clearly. But here’s a question I’ve never been able to answer. What about Eligor? What did he get out of it?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s quite simple, my Lo . . . Karael. Sir. A powerful angel and a powerful demon made a bargain and went to great lengths to keep it secret. For instance, Anaita sent Walter Sanders to Hell and brought a serial killer back from the dead—two kinds of dead—and sent him after me, all to keep the lid on what she’d done.”

“And what do you know about angels in Hell, Doloriel?” The cloudiness threatened a storm. I swallowed, or would have if I’d been on Earth.

“I think you know, sir. I think you know where I’ve been and a lot of what I’ve done. Anaita wouldn’t have a reason to keep quiet about it, not once she was really in Heaven’s power for good. And also I told Pathiel-Sa, the Angel of Conciliation, pretty much everything while I was imprisoned.”

A long silence, and it was a silence. We might have been in outer space for all the background noise that wasn’t. “Let’s assume that you’re right,” the Angel Militant said. “That I know more about what you’ve been doing than is going to be officially admitted, Doloriel. And yet I’m still willing to let you go back to your normal job and even give you a few perks.”

I had the distinct sense of a shiny lure bobbing in front of me, but I wasn’t in the mood. “I hear you. And I’ll be happy to do that once I’ve had a chance to finish talking to you about all this.”

“You really are a very determined fellow,” said Karael.

“So everyone tells me.” I took an imaginary breath, the kind you take before jumping into the deep end. “Okay, so let’s put aside the question about what was in this for Grand Duke Eligor, although I think that’s probably pretty important. Help me out with one last thing. You know all about my partner Clarence by now, right?”

“Clarence?”

“Sorry, kind of a private joke. Haraheliel. Earth-name Harrison Ely. Sent in at first to keep an eye on Advocate Sammariel on behalf of management, then he later decided Sam was getting a bum deal and sort of threw in his lot with me. He was one of the souls picked up when you guys raided Kainos, but someone’s put him back on the street again, kind of like you’re offering to do with me if I stop asking questions.”

“Ah,” he said. “That Clarence.”

“Right. Well, apparently instead of going through the normal training like Sam and I had when we joined Counterstrike, when Clarence was being prepared for his undercover assignment for the big bosses, he was sent somewhere different. Somewhere I’d never heard about before. Got schooled on guns there and all kinds of stuff.”

“Yes? So? That was Anaita’s play, son.” He really did sound like a military officer. Just his serious tone of voice made you want to get up and salute. “She needed information about the Magians and wanted a source she could control, so she could stay quiet about them—or, if things went bad, she could manufacture an excuse that she’d been investigating them all along. But I never trusted her.”

“That sounds exactly right, sir. And it makes a lot of sense. But the problem is, it’s not true.”

A very long pause this time. “What?”

“You heard me. It’s not true. Do you want to know what is true? Clarence’s training, that whole little mini-spy-camp of Anaita’s, a kind of under-the-table Counterstrike unit not answerable to the heavenly hierarchy, was arranged by an archangel named Samkiel. And Samkiel’s one of your oldest allies, I found out. Now why would he do that for Anaita? Unless you asked him to.”

“Son, this is getting dangerously close to—”

“We both know what this is getting dangerously close to, Karael. Sir. And you can silence me any one of a thousand ways. But since we’re both here, you might as well hear me out first.” Yes, I knew this was ridiculously dangerous—I’m not that kind of stupid—but I couldn’t stop now. I’d been waiting too long to put it all together. “See, the only arrangement where everything makes sense is that Anaita wasn’t working alone—that she was never working alone. Somebody else must have known exactly when the first soul-snatch was going to take place, because only the folks involved would have been able to put out the alert so quickly and have angels and demons swarming all over Edward Walker’s house like that.”

“Eligor—”

“Didn’t really have a reason to screw things up for Anaita when her plan was going to do Heaven more harm than it would Hell. Doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“But why would some partner of hers want to ‘screw things up,’ as you so eloquently put it, son?”

“I’m not sure. A warning? Or just to get some things into the public records as quickly as possible—insurance that could be used later on? We may never know.”

The silence hung thickly. “And?”

“And then the thing with Samkiel. Why would you approve him doing that for Anaita unless you were helping her out—or pretending to? Because if she wanted the protection of being able to claim she’d been investigating it herself in case things went bad, well, then her partner would want the same thing. And what better protection than being able to say, ‘I sent her to my old ally Samkiel precisely so I could keep an eye on what she was doing. If I’d known she was involved in a crime against Heaven, of course, I would have acted immediately’ and blah blah blah.”

Karael’s voice was even flatter than usual, and usually you could balance a full drink on it without spilling a drop. “You know that proves nothing, son. It’s just speculation.”

“This is all speculation, of course, sir. It’s kind of what I do.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt, but it’s hard to be really brave when you know the person you’re accusing of high crimes can extinguish you as easily as a birthday candle on a cupcake. “But it leads to the most critical unanswered question—what did Eligor want? Why would the Horseman risk his own standing in Hell, give his enemies the means to destroy him if they found out, just to make a deal with Anaita? Who we already know was a bit unstable, not as careful as she should be, prone to silencing allies, and not generally beloved in Heaven?”

“Tell me.”

“Because he didn’t really want a deal with Anaita—he wanted to make contact with someone else. Someone he could make a long-term alliance with. Someone who didn’t make the kind of mistakes that Anaita made, and who would almost certainly become even more powerful after she was gone. Somebody like you, Lord Karael.”

It was a magnificent silence, which gave me plenty of time to wonder what it would feel like to be erased from reality.

“So you’re suggesting that I was involved with Anaita’s madness from the beginning?” Karael said finally. “That she thought I was her partner, but in truth I manipulated things from behind the scenes all along the way, and then left her to hang when the time was right?”

“In a word, sir—amen.”

“Then it’s your turn to answer a question, Doloriel. If all this was true, why haven’t I destroyed you, too? Why would I leave a loose end like you dangling?” The air of good-old-boy, drill-sergeant familiarity that always colored Karael’s speech in my presence had abruptly disappeared. He was clipped, precise, and as calm as a deep, deep pond, but I could see the darkness roll through his glowing presence like a storm. “In short, why do you still exist?”

“That’s the one thing I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t believe bumping off witnesses is really your style, but I doubt that’s the most important reason. It might have something to do with what Anaita said about knowing me when I was alive, but maybe that’s not even true, or if it is true, it’s irrelevant to the bigger picture.” I had run out of tricks and revelations. I suddenly realized the next words might be the last I ever spoke. “I can only guess that for some reason, sir, you think you might need me someday.”

The roil of darkness coagulated, and for a moment I was facing something from which no light gleamed, as though Heaven had tipped sideways, and I was looking down into a hole full of ultimate nothingness. Then, as suddenly as an eyeblink, it dispersed, and I was looking at Karael’s misty but luminous shape again.

“An interesting guess, Doloriel. You will never know if it’s right—in fact, you’ll never know if any of this is right—but you will definitely know when I do want something from you. I’ll tell you one thing now, and one thing only. I have ambitions. Ambitions that you couldn’t begin to understand.”

I couldn’t help myself. “But why would you want to change anything? It’s Heaven, right? Heaven is perfect.”

Karael squeezed out the gleam that indicated a smile. I honestly could not tell you what kind of smile it was, amused or angry. He’d stopped pretending to be my bluff, gruff commanding officer and was now something much more distant and difficult to read. “We all have choices, Advocate Doloriel, whether we are angel or mortal. We make our own path by those choices. And since we are all different, it stands to reason that some of us make better decisions than others. Those who make the best decisions should be allowed to do so for the good of all. Do you understand?”

I couldn’t tell whether I was hearing the plain, unvarnished truth or just another excuse for a fascist takeover. I came extremely close to pointing that out, but there was no question Karael was different from Anaita, and I really had no idea what he planned. Maybe he was right. Certainly the Highest couldn’t be too pleased about how things had been running lately. So for once I kept my mouth shut.

He seemed satisfied with my silence. “Exactly. As for your being useful, well, you had better hope so, Doloriel. Leaving aside all this conspiracy talk, you are an angel who was a single tick of the great Paslogion away from utter destruction. I’d suggest that in the future you do what you’re told. At least when I’m the one telling you.”

And just like that, Heaven vanished and I was back in a hospital bed, full of hurt and stitches, but also—and quite remarkably—still alive and still in possession of my very own soul, however ragged around the edges it might be.