The Book of Daniel (26 page)

“It would be a shame if I had to drop you.”

I looked up in alarm at the angel, guilt flushing through my system. In all the excitement, I had forgotten that they could read my thoughts.

The angel’s path took us over the top of the walls, passing right alongside one of the Fallen. It was close enough to touch, if I had been foolish enough to want to do so. The angel easily dodged the demon and began to descend into the city, plunging downwards in a dizzying spiral and coming to an elegant stop just inside the gates, right next to the Forge. I felt momentarily disoriented by the emptiness of the streets, but of course I knew where everybody had gone. Even through the immense thickness of the gates, I could still hear the unsettling sounds of the fray from which I had just been rescued. The angel pointed to the Forge.

“Go and get yourself another sword, Daniel. Your work is not yet through.”

“What about Harper? Is she okay?”

The angel paused for a moment. “She is still here in Purgatory, for now. If you wish to seek her out, you will find it much easier if you are properly armed. Go now.”

The angel gave me a firm but gentle push towards the Forge, but I wasn’t quite ready to go yet. “Thanks for rescuing me, by the way.”

“You do not need to thank me, Daniel. You need to thank God. It was by His will that you were saved.”

“Why?”

“That’s for you to figure out. But mercy might have something to do with it.”

There was something familiar about the angel’s voice, but until that mention of mercy, I hadn’t quite been able to put my finger on it. It all suddenly snapped into place as I remembered his curious toast back at the Last Chance. “Thomas? Is that you?”

The angel sighed and dropped its lofty pretence. “Yes, it is. But I don’t have time to stand here chatting with you now, however nice that would be,” he said, holding up a hand to forestall the torrent of questions he could sense were coming. “I have to get back to the battle. There are plenty of other people out there who need saving just as badly as you did. And some of them won’t get rescued by the angels anymore, so
you
need to get back out there, too, Dan. Maybe you can help them instead.”

Thomas prepared to take off again, but swivelled his shiny new head to look back over his shoulder before he did so. “Say hello to Harper for me. And don’t forget to keep praying. I know you think it didn’t make a blind bit of difference, but it’s good that you’re trying.”

He sprang into the air and flew gracefully towards the top of the city walls.

“Wait! Thomas! Don’t go!”

“Take care, Dan,” he called back. “Try to make sure that the next time I see you it’s up in Heaven, rather than with another demon about to eat you, eh? It would be a shame if we never got to reminisce with each other about our time in Purgatory over a drink one day.”

And with a salute, he was gone.

I ran into the Forge and quickly obtained a replacement sword. It wasn’t that I was in any desperate rush to put my immortal soul on the line again, but like Thomas said, I wasn’t going to be much use to anyone unarmed, including myself. The hand that picked up the sword was surprisingly steady considering what I had just gone through. I guess that was partly because I was trying to focus more on Harper’s wellbeing than on the horrors that waited for me outside New Jerusalem. But it wasn’t only Harper that occupied my mind; I was also mulling over what my rescue actually meant in the grand scheme of things. The fact that God had sent Thomas to rescue me was quite something. It was the first time I had actually experienced first-hand what Jo would constantly say: that God
did
care for me, even in spite of the way I felt towards Him. On the other hand, if it wasn’t for God’s doing, I wouldn’t have been dangling over a demon’s mouth in the first place. What was I supposed to make of it all?

My feelings towards God in light of my rescue warred against each other as vigorously as the two armies that clashed outside the city. Only about one thing was I crystal clear, and that was that I had to get back out there and find Harper. But as soon as I stepped out of the Forge, I came to a sudden halt as I was struck by a new challenge: how exactly was I supposed to join the battle again if the city gates were closed? As if to answer my question, the gates suddenly rumbled into life. For an instant, I thought they were opening purely for my benefit, but the piercing sound of the angels’ trumpets once again filled the air, and I realised—not without a certain degree of relief—that curfew was about to come into effect.

As soon as the gap between the gates was large enough, the Purgatorians came flooding back into the city again. I focussed my attention on the thousands of faces that streamed past, searching for Harper amongst them. After what seemed like an age, I eventually saw her, marching purposefully through the crowd almost as if it wasn’t there. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, but she quickly turned her head towards me when I called out to her. For a moment, there was a flicker of a smile on her face, but by the time she had made her way over to me, she had regained her cool composure.

“There you are,” she said. “I turn my back for five seconds and you run off. Where’d you go?”

“There was a lunch engagement I wanted to avoid.”

“Yeah, I noticed. It’s a good thing that angel came along when it did.”

“Not just any old angel, either. That was Thomas.”

She laughed with delight. “Damn! They didn’t waste any time polishing him up, did they? Did he say anything?”

“Not much. He didn’t seem much like his old self… but that’s not entirely surprising, I suppose. He told me not to forget to say my prayers. Oh, and he said to say hello to you, too.”

“Well, I’m glad he was able to pass such great insights on to us. We’ll be out of here in no time with his help.” There was no malice behind her sarcasm, and it was a great relief to see her getting back to what I assumed was her usual self. She sighed. “But I’m glad he’s okay. Good old Thomas.”

We were silent for a moment, watching the seemingly never-ending throng of people heading back into the safety of the city. I thought Harper was reflecting on Thomas’s fate, so I was caught off guard when next she spoke.

“Sorry I lost your medallion, Dan.”

“That’s okay. You saved my life out there. Fair exchange.”

“Nonetheless, I know it meant a lot to you.”

“Yeah.”

“She must have been very special, Dan. Your mother, I mean.”

“You’re right, she was. Look, it’s a long story, and I sure as hell could use a drink after all that’s just happened. How about we get back to the pub and I’ll tell you all about it?” A dark look crossed her face, and I held up my hands. “Don’t worry. I’m not asking you out on a date or anything like that. I’m a happily married man, or at least will be as soon as I can find my wife again.”

“So you say. But for all I know, maybe the reason you’re stuck here in Purgatory is because you cheated on your wife.” She waved her hand disdainfully at the other soldiers around us. “You’d be surprised at just how many of this lot are here for exactly that reason.”

“It’s nothing like that, Harper, believe me. I just thought you might like to make a friend, that’s all, because unless I miss my guess, Thomas was your last one in this damned place. If you want to go it alone, feel free.” I started to walk off, pushing my way into the crowd. “If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.”

There was a slight pause, and for a moment, I was afraid I’d been too hard. Even though I barely knew her, I felt a connection with Harper, just like I had with Thomas, and I didn’t want to lose contact with her. If I had, things would have turned out a lot differently, that’s for sure… or maybe they wouldn’t. I don’t know. Either way, I was hugely relieved when she called out after me a couple of seconds later.

“Dan, wait! I’m sorry. I… I’m not a very trusting person. Especially when it comes to men.”

“It’s alright. I understand. Come on, let’s go. You can tell me about it on the way. If you like.”

She didn’t that day, and I didn’t press her. But our return to the Last Chance completed the pattern that was to describe my days in Purgatory from then on: switching between the pub and the battlefield, either fighting for my life—or someone else’s—or else reflecting on my fortunes. Without sleep, I quickly lost track of time, the alternating sessions of combat and contemplation blurring together like the windows of a rapidly accelerating train.

For my first few forays out of the city, I was hopelessly out of my depth, despite all the expert swordsmanship I had apparently been blessed with. A demon I stabbed would lope off with my sword sticking out of it, leaving me to face its peers unarmed, or I would be so busy fending off one demon that I wouldn’t notice another looming behind me until it was too late. Every time, I was saved by an angel, and usually at the last possible moment, meaning that I had plenty to think about when I was safe once again. And at first, it worked; there’s nothing like having a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth removed from around your head to make you grateful you’re alive, and I even managed to force out the occasional prayer of thanks. But as I lost count of how many times I had been rescued, the novelty wore off, and, incredibly, I almost began to feel blasé about my time on the battlefield. The feeling of near invulnerability that came from frequent rescue made me bolder, reckless even, until one day, I actually managed to kill a demon for the first time. Granted, it was only a small one, and by the time I had finished it off, I was already in need of rescuing from its comrades, but nonetheless, it marked a significant turning point in my time in Purgatory.

It wasn’t long after this minor victory that I killed another demon, and then another. I began to keep score, scratching a mark into the armour on my left arm for each one that I killed. Tradition would have it that I keep score on the handle of my sword instead, but I was still losing swords fairly regularly; I was hoping that I would find it a little easier to keep hold of my arm. With each kill, my confidence grew, and as it did, the initial recovery that my faith had undergone began to fade a little. Every time my sword and I proved that we were able to cope with whatever Hell had to throw against us, the feeling of dependence on God to bail me out weakened. Don’t get me wrong, the angels were still saving my arse on a regular basis, but they were doing so less and less frequently. And on top of that, it was difficult to maintain a grateful attitude towards something that had become a part of daily life. It was like I had often said to Jo: I understood that Christians were grateful to God for sending Jesus to save them from their sins, but exactly how many times did they have to say ‘thank you’ for that single act?

Yet even as my battlefield reliance on God waned, so my mental struggle with Him increased. I knew that, logically, the only way out of Purgatory was to repair my relationship with Him—but there were too many obstacles between that logic and a genuine change of heart. No matter how often I was saved, or which way I turned things over in my mind, I simply couldn’t feel the love that I was supposed to feel towards this distant entity that had been a source of hurt for so long. There was no sign of communication from On High, either. Despite Thomas’s advice, prayer didn’t seem to help, even though I continued to try; after all, if praying was one of the tools at my disposal to try to patch things up with God and get back to Jo, I was certainly going to persevere with it. I tried to talk it through with Harper over a beer at the Last Chance one day, but she was just as stuck as I was.

“You’re talking to the wrong girl, Dan. I know what they tell you about this place, that you’re supposed to ‘get right with God’, whatever that means, and then you’re out of here. But they always conveniently sidestep the fact that it’s difficult to fix a relationship with someone who never has anything to say. There were some pretty fucking horrible things I went through before I checked out from planet Earth, and I’d love to know just what the hell God was playing at.”

I trod carefully. While I wasn’t exactly awash with friends back on Earth, they seemed to be an even more scarce commodity in Purgatory, and I didn’t want to overstep the mark and push Harper away. “Want to talk about it? Maybe I can help. Maybe we can help each other.”

A pained look crossed her face as she struggled with the idea. I sat quietly and, I hoped, encouragingly. Then she came to a decision, and her face relaxed into resignation. “Alright then. But this is strictly between you and me. You blab this to anyone, and I’ll send you to Hell myself.”

Chapter 17

H
arper began with a heavy sigh that almost told me her whole story in one go. “I used to be a Christian, you know. Not to the same extent as Abraham said he was—I didn’t even go to church all that regularly—but my parents always made it clear that we should be grateful to God for everything we had… and we had a
lot
. My dad was Archie Lamont, you see. Ever heard of him? Lamont Industries? Well, let’s just say that money was never a problem for the Lamont family… or maybe it
was
the problem, I don’t know.

“I guess you can trace it all back to my sixth birthday. Like a lot of girls that age, I was crazy about ponies, so that’s what my parents got me for a present. Jasper was his name. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s pretty bloody amusing to think of me all starry-eyed over something like that, but I tell you, I loved that damned pony. Within a week, I’d covered our fridge with pictures of him, and as you can imagine, we had a pretty big fridge. For four years, me and Jasper, we were inseparable. And then one day, he suddenly had to be put down.

“I was completely devastated. Jasper was everything to me, and to have him snatched away without warning like that… that was tough to get over. Before you ask, no, I’m not in Purgatory because I got mad at God for killing my pony. It was actually the fact that he’d gone to Heaven to be with God that helped get me through it, to be honest. But I was determined that I wasn’t going to let anything like that happen to me ever again, or to anyone else, either, so I decided right then that I was going to become a vet when I grew up.