Dave Butler Writes

“What do I want, then?” Jim asked.

“Jim, don’t do it,” Twitch urged his friend.

“Whatever you want,” the Legate told him, “you can get it with power.  Power brings all good things.  Power, and money, which is the same thing.”

“That’s true!” Adrian called out, and Mike elbowed him in the chest.

“I could have any woman I wanted,” Jim suggested.

“They’d line up.”  The Legate smiled a pimp’s greasy grin.

“Wealth.”  Jim grinned.  “The kingdoms of this world.  All I have to do is bow down to you.”

“All of them could be yours.  And you don’t have to bow down to anyone, including me.  You’ll never have to bow down to anyone ever again.”

“I could finally afford to fix the leaky radiator on the van.”

The Legate’s smile became uncertain.  “You could have any car you wanted.”

Jim’s smile disappeared into a flat, hard line.  “I want the damn van.”

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There is war coming,” the Legate intoned.  “And there was war in Heaven.  Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.”

“The Revelation of John,” Jim said.  “The refuge and comfort of every crackpot for the last two thousand years.”  Something burning behind his eyes suggested to Jane that he didn’t quite believe his own words.

“War is inevitable!” Raphael shot back.  “You can’t build a kingdom on lies!”

Jane disagreed: “I’m not sure you can build a kingdom on anything else.”

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After the Legate came two law enforcement officers, Sheriff’s deputies, Jane now saw.  The younger man, with buzzcut hair and a thin mustache, was in front.  He called out to the Legate, asking the older man to stop and getting a cold shoulder in return.  Behind him came an older, heavier deputy, with a beard and a paunch and his hand resting on the butt of a gun at his hip.

“And you there,” Mustache continued, pointing at Jim.  “Drop your sword, sir, so we can have a polite conversation about what’s going on here.”  The deputy looked around at the Bearers of the Sword that surrounded the building.  “A polite conversation that also made some sense would be a nice bonus.”

Jim only narrowed his eyes and tightened his grip on his sword.  Jane was sure she had seen him somewhere before, though not recently.

“Thank you, Qayna,” the Legate said.  He stopped and sat on the metal casing of the generator.  “You’ve done exactly as we’d hoped.”

“Funny,” Jane said.  “I don’t see that I have.”

“Everyone here should consider himself under arrest!” Deputy Mustache insisted, pointing his pistol at the ground beside the Legate.  “You with the sword, put it down… now!”

“Raphael,” the Legate said, and his voice sounded old.  “Can we end this?”

Deputy Beard drew his pistol, a large-caliber revolver.  “You heard what the man said.”  He raised the gun.

“Thanks, pard,” Deputy Mustache glared at Jim.

“It’s over,” Beard said.

Bang!

Deputy Mustache fell to the ground, bleeding from the back of his head.

“Thank you, Rafi,” the Legate said.  “Now, let’s get down to a little business, shall we?”

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Azazel stepped into the center of the Council, whip trailing behind him on the stones.  He smiled, and Qayna was reminded how beautiful he was—how beautiful they all were, setting aside the part-animal forms.  “I apologize, Samael,” he purred.  “I didn’t hear your motion.  Could you repeat it for me?”

The Fallen Samael kicked his legs and murmmphed, his head still stuck in the base of the Tower.  The crack split wider and crawled further up the stone.

“Samael questioned your policies,” Bull Head growled.  “He’s not the only one of us who thinks you’ve been too soft on Eden.”

Azazel arched his eyebrows and nodded slightly.  “What Samael did,” he said slowly, “was issue a challenge.”  He looked around at the other members of the Council.  “Does anyone else here… wish to issues me… another challenge?”

There was a heavy silence.  The ring of fire surrounding the city of Ainok was through its gates, Qayna thought, and burnings its way closer.  She could hear screams, far outside the Plaza, and smell scorched flesh.

“I thought not.”

Azazel turned in a flash and kicked his goat-like hoof into the posterior of his rival.  Samael bellowed in anger, the sound muffled by the stone around his head, and was pounded deeper into the rock.

Samael could stand the blow, but the Tower couldn’t.  The widening crack became a fissure, and suddenly Qayna could see daylight through the middle of the Tower.  She dragged Jacob back and away at a sprint, and this time Serpent Head was too busy watching out for his own skin to get in the way.

CRASH!!!

Great blocks of masonry rained around the Grand Plaza, crashing to the ground like falling stars and smashing up the smooth white stone.  Azazel stood still, eyes flashing at his rivals as they cowered in the tumult.  Qayna managed to get behind Serpent Head and then several more of the Fallen, and their bodies intercepted big chunks of rock that would have flattened her and the boy.

Then the Tower was flat and a cloud of white dust slowly settled over them all.  Several of the Fallen lay bruised and bleeding in the wreckage, but Azazel stood tall in the center.  With a single flap of his wings he snapped the dust off his own person and the ground beneath him.

“Look at that,” the founder of the city of Ainok said, glancing down at his own hoof.  “You’ve made me split a nail.”

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“I don’t want to kill you,” Jane said, “but I have to tell you that I feel pretty strongly about not having my hand forced.”

“You would murder Queen Mab on her own doorstep?” the Queen looked affronted, staring at Jane down her long nose.  “Queen Mab and her consort Oberon, Peerless Among the Fey?”

Jane laughed and swore in Adamic.  The curse word shook the mirror hanging behind the two fairies askew.  “Maybe,” she said, “and maybe not.”  Behind her, she definitely heard the sound of fighting getting louder.  “You can’t kill me, and I have no people you can retaliate against.  Why should I care?”

“If the occupants of the Mirror Throne were so crassly murdered by a Flatworlder,” the Queen sniffed.  “There would be war between the worlds.  Are you so detached from your father’s and mother’s descendants that you can accept that?”

Jane shrugged her shoulders.  “Maybe,” she said again, “and maybe not.  But I’d sure as hell kill a couple of Queen’s Rangers stupid enough to dress up in costume and try to fool me.  And nobody would go to war over that.”

They didn’t blink.  The King curdled his eyebrows like she’d said something distasteful.  “Queen’s Rangers?” he sneered.

She pointed the gun at him.  “Drop your pants,” she ordered.

Pop!  Pop!  Whizzang!

The sudden presence of bullets in the air told Jane that the band had caught up to her and she was out of time.  If her ka weren’t so drained, or her pistol, she’d turn and fight them.  On the other hand, if her ka weren’t so drained, she could have just blasted these annoying fairies into oblivion.  Instead, she raised the pistol and fired a shot into the air.

Bang!

“Two left,” she said, pointing the muzzle at Oberon.  “I don’t miss.”

“Stop!” he pleaded, his eyes suddenly serious.

“Oberon…” the Queen warned him.

With quick but trembling fingers, the King undid his belt buckle and dropped his pants.  A donkey’s tail twitched nervously into sight.

“I thought so.”  Bang!  Bang!  Jane emptied the Model 1910, firing the last two shots into the center of the fake Oberon’s chest.  He flew back without a sound, hitting the wall and sinking to the floor.

“Give my regards to Mab,” Jane snorted.

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“I’m sorry,” Father grunted, grabbing her by her shoulders and throwing her down.

“I deserve it,” she said.  She didn’t really mean it, but she hadn’t meant to cause Father grief.

“This world is a hard and fallen one,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks.  “That is not your fault.”

The foremost of the Messengers bore down upon her, a clay pot in his hand.  Qayna stared at the Messenger’s face, imprinting it upon her memory.  “This dye,” the Messenger thundered, “is the blood of Abil.  His blood cried to heaven to witness your guilt, and now it will cry to all your family and their descendants as an eternal witness.”

The Messenger dipped a shard of bone into the pot and scraped its jagged edge across Qayna’s face.  She screamed and twisted, and Father held her down.

“This stylus is the bone of Abil,” the Messenger continued.  “You would not make an acceptable sacrifice, and instead sacrificed your own brother’s flesh and bone.  Now the bone records your sin.”

The Messenger continued scratching her, running curving lines about Qayna’s face and all over her body.  Qayna bucked and screamed and stared at each Messenger, memorizing their faces.  One day, she swore, she would indeed be a witness.

Father wept, but did not relent.

Shet only stared.

“These words that I write upon your face,” the Messenger finished, “are the name of Abil.  “As you have blotted out his name from among your family, so shall your name be blotted out.  As you have taken from him his life, so do I now take from you your death.  You shall be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth, until the end of time.”

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“I get it, I get it!” one of the girls giggled.  Her jacket was a shell of sequins around a bubbling core of young person.  “This is like Calvin Coolidge, right?  Isn’t there some story about Coolidge not talking much?”

Jim arched an eyebrow and nodded in the direction of the restrooms.

“Silent Cal,” her friend agreed.  She had big hair that looked like it would coordinate well with the suit and tie of the wizard Adrian.  Fashion, like everything else, was a boring, unstoppable cycle.

“And at this party, right?  This woman comes up to President Coolidge and says ‘I bet my friend I can get you to say more than two words,’” she seemed proud of herself for remembering this banal story about a dead, unimportant president.  Jane remembered Calvin Coolidge; the best she could say about him was that he didn’t have delusions of grandeur.

Which, on reflection, was an unusual quality in a politician.

Jim smiled politely and kept walking towards the hallway.  He clenched and unclenched his fists, which Jane read as a sign that he was itching for action and wished he had a weapon in his hand.  She was happier, of course, that he didn’t.  She stumbled onto the tracks a few feet away, feigning drunkenness, as Jim reached the little plank bridge.  She saw clearly now that he had something under his shirt, against his belly.

“What was Coolidge’s answer?” Big Hair looked like she was on the edge of her seat.

“You lose,” Jane said, and she stabbed Jim with both knives.

She’d heard the story, too.

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