Revenge of the Three (Hand of God) (2 page)

Chapter 2

             
We sat in Maria’s office as Ranger O’Brien an Agent Jenkins asked me their questions. They seemed to think I had something to do with the Palau incident.

             
“You know Pastor Charlie, the scene in Palau didn’t look a whole lot different than the one at the Alamodome a few years back,” O’Brien said. He was leaning against a chair next to the door. He kept his hat on while in the building for some reason. Even if he took it off, he’d be much taller than me and didn’t appear to have an ounce of fat on him. Not bad shape for a guy in his mid-forties.

             
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “The cops asked me about that back then, but I wasn’t there.”

             
“Some of your former church members said you’d been going to all of the Bishop’s previous services. Suddenly you don’t make it to one, and everyone ends up dead and the Bishop vanishes. Lots of coincidences there if you ask me.”

             
“I guess so. I was busy that night. I’ve been over all of this before. Do you have a point?” Jenkins was standing by Maria’s desk playing with his cell phone. He wasn’t looking up, but I’m sure he was paying attention. I had a feeling they were here just fishing for answers. The Palau thing was weird, so they figured they’d round up the usual suspects. With the similarities in the cases, I’d have done the same thing.

             
“He had nothing to do with that church in Palau. He’s been here working,” Maria chimed in.

             
“Is that so?” O’Brien asked.

             
“It is. We had a funeral Sunday afternoon. He was here helping me get ready.”

             
O’Brien looked her up and down as if she were a five course meal.

             
“Well, I’m sure he’s a
big
help around here.”

             
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Maria asked as she shot up out of her chair.

             
“Oh nothing, just thinking out loud”

             
“Well why you and your pal go think out loud somewhere else. Unless you have a warrant, we are done here.”

             
“My, my,” O’Brien said as he looked at me. “She’s sure a feisty one Charlie.”

             
“That she is.  I wouldn’t piss her off.” Jenkins finally put his phone down long enough to involve himself in the situation.

             
“Look everyone, we don’t we all just calm down a bit, okay? I apologize for my colleague here. He comes from a different era of law enforcement.” Jenkins glanced at O’Brien and rolled his eyes. “We’re just checking all leads, old and new. We have to rule everyone out. You know the drill. Ms. Salazar here told us you were here, then you were here. Thank you for your time.” He got up and walked out with O’Brien in tow. O’Brien tipped his hat as he left, and they were gone.

             
“Well,
that
was interesting.” I said.

             
“Shut up, Charlie.”

             
“What?”

             
“Look, when you first came here, we didn’t ask you a lot of questions. My dad knew there was something about you and told us you’d been through a lot. But you’ve been a big help here and been good to us. But what was this all about? Why would they come question you about the Alamodome?”

             
Maria’s huge, brown eyes glared at me. In my entire life, I’d never had so much as a girlfriend. Some people even thought I was gay. I was attracted to women, just never had time for relationships. Being a sociopath and all, I didn’t exactly have feelings like most people for one. Not to mention with me running around and cutting people up, it didn’t seem like the best way to raise a family. So I figured it was safer this way for everyone.

             
“I know, Maria. I’ve appreciated everything you’ve done. I told you all how I’d met that Bishop guy. I went to his services and thought something was off about him.  I’d asked around about him and even got thrown out of one service by his security. So when all those people died at the Alamodome, people thought I had something to do with it. I have no idea what they think I could have done. The authorities ended up ruling it a mass suicide, but the Bishop chickened out and took off.” I was making some of it up as I went along. There is no way she could have handled the truth. “Fact is, most of the members of my old church died there. That’s part of why I came here. I couldn’t go back to that place.  I needed a change.”

             
Her eyes softened as I explained. I’d realized I’d never told any of the Salazar family much information about myself. I figured the less they knew, the better.

             
“Wow, I had no idea. I’m really sorry.” She leaned in and gave me a quick hug. It was an odd feeling, but she felt good to hold, even if only for a second. For not being fully human, the last couple of years had brought more humanity out in me than any other time in my life. There had even been times, if I didn’t know better, where I’d have thought I was happy. This day’s visit made me feel uneasy, though. It was as if that darkness inside me was coming back again. I doubt it was every really gone, but I’d managed to put it to sleep. Between the deaths in Mexico, and the visit from the Feds, I feared it had awakened. I pushed the thought out of my mind before it affected my mood.

             
“Thank you,” I said. “It was a hard time, but your family has been a great help. You’ve always treated me like one of your own. That means a lot.”

             
“Well, we are happy to have you Charlie. Maybe one day you can have your own church again.”

             
“Maybe. What’s the plan for the rest of the day?”  I said, changing the subject. Before she could respond, her cell phone rang. She pressed it to her ear and said, “Yeah, okay,” a few times and began writing something down. After a minute she hung up.

             
“Looks like we got our plan for the today. Gotta pick up a body. There was a bad accident on the freeway. This should be a good one.” She grabbed her bag from behind the desk and headed outside to the van. I followed, trying to keep up.

Chapter 3

             
We arrived at the crash scene within twenty minutes. Fire trucks, ambulances and police cars lined the streets as traffic in the other lanes was at a standstill. Maria parked and we both climbed out, grabbing our cot and gloves. There was a little Honda against the guardrail with some minor damage on the front end. Another car was sitting about twenty feet away, looking more torn up in the front. The officer pointed us to the Honda.

             
Once we reached the car, we saw the dead girl in the passenger’s seat. She was crumpled over in an unnatural position, as if she tried to do a somersault, but backwards. I noticed the windshield was cracked into a spider web pattern with blood splattered along the interior. The girl’s head was busted wide open to the point that you couldn’t make out her face. She’d more than likely not been wearing her seatbelt. It was a shame, since the crash didn’t look all that bad. Those were usually the crashes that were the most fatal. When the car is torn to pieces, then it did its job and took the brunt of the force from the collision. When there is little damage, then the passengers took the brunt.  In this case it was this poor girl.

             
Maria made no expression as the firefighters helped us get the girl out of the car. We wrapped her in blankets, placed her on the cot and zipped the cover closed. After we loaded her into the van, Maria spoke to the officers, filled out some paperwork and joined me back in the van. We hadn’t spoken the entire time we were at the scene. We rarely did. When people see the funeral van show up, the scene gets really quiet and people watch our every move. We were always careful to be respectful of the body, and whatever friends or family who may be watching.

             
“Did they say how old she was?” I asked as Maria climbed in.

             
“Nineteen. She’s a UT student here on spring break.”

             
“Wow, that’s too bad.”

             
“Yeah.”

             
We didn’t say much the rest of the way back. When we reached the funeral home, I took the body to the back and began cleaning her off. Maria had to stop by her office and drop off the paperwork. While she was doing that, I’d prepare the body for her to embalm. Since I wasn’t a licensed funeral director I couldn’t do the actual embalming, but I could assist. I got the body in the embalming room. I placed her on the table and removed her clothes so I could wash her off. After I’d finished cleaning the body, I noticed Maria had yet to return.

             
I took off my apron and gloves and headed back to her office. It wasn’t like her to not get a body ready right away. As I approached, I heard her laughing in her office.  There was another voice laughing too- a man’s voice. You don’t often hear laughter in a funeral home, so I had no idea what was up. When I walked in her office, Maria was sitting at her desk, smiling and giggling as the man told her some story. He looked up at me and I recognized him right away, even though I hadn’t seen him in a few years.

             
“Charlie! How have you been, buddy?” He said.

             
Lucifer.

             
“Well, um, hi. What brings you here?”

             
“Charlie!” Maria squealed, “You don’t ever talk about friends or anything. Dennis here said you guys were good friends in college and he was in town! So nice to hear stories about you as a kid.”

             
“Yes, I’m sure,” I said. Lucifer winked at me with his devil-may-care grin. “Could you excuse us for a minute Maria? I’d like to catch up with my old friend for a few. The girl is all ready to go.”

             
“Oh, of course,” she said as she stood. “It was so nice meeting you.” Maria shook his hand and he held it for just a little too long. She headed back to the embalming room, so I closed the door once she was gone. I then turned and punched Lucifer in the arm, causing him to jump.

             
“Ow!”

             
“So you feel pain now?”

             
“I’m kind of in flesh here. I do that from time to time.”

             
“What are you doing here? Last time I saw you, you told me to stay away from you and poofed away with your tail between your legs.”

             
“I don’t have a tail.  That’s just a myth. But you freaked me out a little bit last time.”

             
When he last saw me, t had been with the Bishop, who we now know was Jesus Christ himself, having his last revival service in the Alamodome. I’d just turned over fifty thousand people in attendance into a hoard of zombies and zapped the Bishop unconscious by reaching my fingers into his skull. Apparently some things were too scary, even for the devil.

             
“Well you left me hanging after all that. What do you want?”

             
“Yes, I saw. The crucifixion was a nice touch.”

             
“Yeah, thanks. Next time we’ll make it a tailgate party.”

             
“Don’t be a smartass, Chuck.”

             
I cringed. I hated that nickname, particularly coming from him. “What. Do. You. Want?”

             
“Okay. Your handiwork last time turned everything onto its ear. The whole cosmos is in a tailspin.”

             
“Spare me the dramatics. What are you talking about?”

             
“The Old Man Upstairs wasn’t so thrilled with his boy failing to a Nephilim, of all things. So Christ is now in the Abyss.”

             
I almost fell out of my chair. The Abyss is what we know as hell. It’s just an eternal void of nothingness, yet you are fully conscious. There is no sound, sight, smell - nothing.  Just you hanging in empty space alone with your thoughts and sometimes the sounds of others screaming. I would imagine it sucks.

             
“Are you serious? Why didn’t he just come after me? He put His own on into the Abyss?”

             
“I hear it may not be permanent, but just enough to get his attention. He most likely will come after you, just using a different approach. As you know, things get sticky when They cross realms. There are rules and limitations.”

             
“Isn’t the Old Man the One who made those rules?
              “Not exactly. The universe sort of has a will of its own.”

             
“Okay. So you didn’t answer my question. Why are you here? You obviously want something.”

             
“You’re so smart Chuck. Okay, you saw the thing on the news about the church in Mexico, everyone dead?”

             
“Yeah, the Feds and Texas Rangers were here asking me about it.”

             
“Well the Old Man has sent the Ghost to finish what the Bishop could not. He will be a bit harder to stop.”

             
“Why’s that?”

             
“Because he’s a
ghost
genius.” Lucifer rolled his eyes as if I were too stupid to bother explaining it to.

             
“So what? You expect me to stop him, too?”

             
“You’re the man, my friend.”

             
“And how? Turn him into a ghost-zombie?”

             
“You’ll figure it out,” Lucifer stood. “I gotta run. I can only maintain this body for a day or two at a time. So I’m going to go have some fun with it while I can. I’d ask you to come hang, but looks like you got your hands full with your senorita
in
there.”

             
“Whatever. You going to be in touch, or am I on my own again?”

             
“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

             
“Wonderful.”