Authors: Cliff Hicks
They all talked and talked, and Jake sat there quietly, and thought and thought.
Morning turned into midday, and the group ordered lunch, even going so far as to order a sandwich for Jake, who nibbled at it, but didn’t say anything to anyone while he did other than a brief “Thank you” when the sandwich was brought to them.
Midday started to push into afternoon, and early evening wasn’t far in the horizon when Jake snapped his fingers, and the whole table immediately fell silent, turning to look at him.
“You’ve got it?” Bob asked.
“Think so,” Jake said, cautiously.
“Tell us,” James asked quietly.
“I have a few questions, and a few observations, and I want to make sure you all agree with me on these first.”
“Sure,” Randall agreed. “Lay’em on us.”
“So the first thing I think is that you three are basically in the clear, no matter what happens,” he said as he pointed to the three angels.
Shelly nodded. “We sort of came to that conclusion ourselves. They’re just going to assume we’re lost on Earth looking for you.”
Jake nodded back, then looked at Bob. “And you, Bob, you can come and go whenever you want, so as long as you poke your head in everyone once in a while, they’re not even going to notice you’re missing.”
“Also true, kid.”
He turned to look back at the three angels. “How did you know it was Bob who brought me up to Heaven?”
James laughed softly. “Not that I blame you for forgetting, but you told us. Early on in your time in…” he paused searching for the right word, then frowned, “in our imprisonment of you, you demanded we ‘go get Bob’ to check if some mistake had been made in your assignment. I remembered it because I thought Bob was a funny name for a Cherub.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a funny Cherub,” Bob interjected.
“So there aren’t records of who brings up who?”
Bob shook his head. “We destroy all of those after we get you back to Heaven.”
“What about the people who are still walking around Earth?”
Bob shrugged slightly. “What can I say, kid? Shit happens. Sometimes the soul doesn’t want to come to Heaven. Sometimes they run from the Cherubim in fright. Sometimes they even attack us. If they really piss us off, sometimes we’ll tell the Taggers about them, but most of them, we just forget we ever saw them.”
“I think I’ve got a plan, but I’d have to give up my sword and my halo. I don’t give a damn about the halo but I don’t know that I want to give up the sword,” he said with a sigh. “It’d leave us defenseless.”
“We can use mine,” James interrupted. “I haven’t taken mine out with you around, Jake, but I have one with me as well.” He turned to the other two angels, and nodded at them apologetically. “Sorry. I just kept it on me from when I was a Tagger. I didn’t think it was particularly relevant.”
“You shouldn’t have to give yours up either. Ideally, we should all have one.”
The Cherubim smirked. “Kid,” he said with a mildly offended tone. “I can get you a hundred swords, if that’s all. Look at who you’re talking to. What do you have in mind?”
“Okay then… here’s the plan…”
*
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A
s Jake and the angels headed back to the Rockies to pick up his halo, Bob headed back to Heaven. Jake’s plan was sound, although it required a little bit of luck. Of course, as Jake pointed out, every plan did.
Bob wandered back into the Cherubim barracks and tried his best to look a little shaken. He walked through the corridors and over to a door he knew rather well. The door was open, but he knocked on the doorframe anyway. He tried to do it as timidly as possible.
“Hey, uh, Lenny? You in?” Bob asked.
Lenny was at his desk, chipping slightly at a statue he was working on. Lenny wasn’t a bad sculptor, but he certainly wasn’t good, and it seemed no matter how many years he spent working on it, he wasn’t going to get much better. So people generally told him they thought his work was “nice” but they didn’t tend to display it anywhere prominent.
Despite their squabble in front of Jake, Lenny and Bob were fairly decent friends. They simply had a very brassy friendship, and tended to razz each other a lot. The fact that Bob was being timid was enough to make Lenny nervous to start.
“Sure thing, dirtbag,” he said, trying to take the edge off. “C’mon in. What’s on your mind?”
Bob groaned. “I’m a in pickle, Len.”
Lenny chuckled slightly. “Something you can’t handle? I doubt that.”
“I
think
I can handle it, but I need a favor.”
“A favor? How big a favor?”
“You remember that thing with the guy and the monkey I covered for you on?”
“It was an orangutan,” Lenny winced. “Oof. Yeah.”
“We’ll be square.”
“Heaven’s sake, Bob, what happened?”
Bob moved into the dorm room and sat down on Lenny’s bunk. “So I was escorting a couple of souls up to Heaven, and I’m about to drop these two guys off in their line, right?”
“Sure sure.”
“And then a doorway opens up.”
Lenny swiveled his chair around to look straight at Bob. “A what?”
“A doorway! One of ours! And this Tagger comes running right through it!”
“A Tagger? Running through a doorway?”
“I know!”
“
You’re sure it was a Tagger?”
Bob frowned. “Lenny, I know a Tagger when I see one. The guy had a flaming sword and a halo. If that isn’t a Tagger, I don’t know what it is. He was sprinting at a dead run.”
“
A Tagger running into Heaven through a doorway in the lines? That’s surreal.”
“
Not as surreal as what happened next.”
“
Why, what happened next? What did you do?”
“
I didn’t know what
to
do, so I went over and looked at the door.”
“And what happened?”
“Another Tagger came running right through and plowed into me!” Bob said.
“Jesus!”
“Exactly! And the two of us fell to the ground and we fell on top of his compass, then he took off running a minute later after the angel who came through the door in the first place.”
“A Tagger chasing another Tagger? That’s crazy. That doesn’t make any sense!”
“I know! I can’t make heads or tails of it either!
Lenny looked at him for a moment. “So what’s the problem? How are you in trouble?”
Bob groaned again. “I blocked the guy, Len. And I shattered the compass!”
“That’s not your fault, Bob!” Lenny said, patting Bob’s knee reassuringly. “How were you to know?”
“Still, I feel like shit about it. And I got this little bit of cloth from the wreckage,” Bob said as he pulled out the swatch of cloth from his pocket. “I want to give it back to the Taggers, but I don’t want them to know it was me. I don’t want to stick out, y’know? Hopefully he’s forgotten what I look like at all, and the less he thinks about me, the less likely he is to report me to Control. I was hoping…”
“What, Bob?”
“I was hoping you could take it to them for me, and tell them you saw the Tagger bump into me, and saw the compass shatter, and after he left and I left, you picked up the cloth and thought they might want it back, rather than it getting thrown out.”
“Why me?”
“Lenny,” Bob pleaded. “If you tell them you just saw the whole thing, then they’ll know I was just being a clumsy idiot, and won’t think I had something to do with that first Tagger getting away from the second one!”
“Jeez… Bob, I dunno.”
Bob pointed a finger at him. “You want me telling Control about the guy and the monkey?”
Lenny raised his hands in surrender. “Okay! Okay! I’ll do it. How am I gonna recognize the Tagger who bumped into you?”
The Cherubim rolled his eyes. “You can’t miss him, Lenny. He’s got ‘BORN TO KILL’ carved into his halo.”
It was Lenny’s turn to groan. “Max. I should’ve figured.”
“You know the guy?”
“I know
of
the guy. Hell, I’m more surprised
you
haven’t heard of him. He thinks he’s Billy Badass up here,” Lenny grunted. “I know where to find him, too.” Lenny closed his fingers on the scrap, but didn’t take it from him yet. “And after this we’re square about the guy and the monkey?” He closed his eyes and scrunched his face. “I mean the guy and the
orangutan
?”
“We’re square. Consider it the biggest debt in my favor bank paid in full.”
Lenny nodded then took the cloth from Bob as he stood up. “Okay. I’ll go do it now.”
“Thanks,” Bob said, getting up with him, rushing to hug the other Cherubim. “You’re the best, man.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah… now get off me,” Lenny said with a laugh. He walked to the doorway as he pocketed the scrap of cloth. “Worry about it no more. It’ll be done faster than you know.” Then Lenny left, heading towards Max’s barracks.
Bob sighed a deep breath, shaking his head, muttering to himself. “Sure hope you know what you’re doing, Jake.”
*
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J
ake sat in the empty apartment, looking at his hands, trying not to look at the halo over his head or the sword hilt lying in front of him. It was Kelly’s apartment, but she had gone to stay with her family for a few days, leaving the place empty, and silent. The light from the streetlights outside of the apartment complex glowed quietly in through the window, and the only sound in the apartment was the sound of Kelly’s refrigerator humming in a low, ominous rumble.
The toga itched, and the tunic wasn’t much better. He wasn’t sure how long he was going to wait here. He didn’t much care for waiting. He certainly hadn’t when he was alive. He’d been an impatient man, with a wicked temper if he was rubbed the wrong way.
But this was what had to happen.
Or so everyone said.
He picked up the sword hilt, examining it, pushing his thumb over the gem to let the blade spring to life. He swept it through the air a bit, getting familiar with it in his hands. It seemed such a strange thing, but here it was, a sword of fire.
His thumb moved off the gem and the blade disappeared. He set the hilt down then his left hand lifted up to feel the halo hovering over his head. It didn’t feel like metal. In fact, it almost felt alive. It had no sense of temperature to it, but it almost crackled to the touch, the sense of presence imbued in it. He smoothed a fingertip along its surface, and it occurred to him that he didn’t have any idea what the thing was made of. It wasn’t gold. It wasn’t any kind of metal at all. It wasn’t stone or rock. It wasn’t flesh. Perhaps it was wood, Jake thought, underneath some kind of lacquer. But it didn’t do anything. It didn’t serve any purpose. It just… hung there.