Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

She gives me a conspiratorial wink.

“My guess is not.”

“It’s every man for himself now? I must have missed that Commandment. Why did you send those Lacunas after me? They almost sliced a friend of mine.”

“Whoever the friend was, I’m sure they deserved it. And I didn’t send any golems after you. Marshal Wells was good enough to put a tracking device on you, but that’s all. Trust me, if I had sent something, it wouldn’t have been to frighten you.”

She’s telling the truth. I can’t read angels like civilians, but the angel inside me can and it isn’t picking up any lies. So, who would want me to stop what I’m doing? Cabal? Aki? His mother or someone working for her? Maybe. Maybe it’s Brigitte’s people wanting me to stay out of their business. Hell, Fiona and Tracy might have talked to some of the other zombie minders. They all have reasons for wanting me not to get too close to a Savant. Not that worrying about it really matters. Cabal is already dead. Aki, Koralin, or whoever else it might have been won’t get another chance to ambush me. Everything ends tonight. All debts paid. All accounts closed. Tonight is the end of someone’s world. If it’s mine, it’s going to be messy.

Wells turns to someone in his crew.

“Marshal Sola, arrest this man.”

Marshal Julie looks even more uncomfortable. But she reaches under her jacket and pulls out a set of handcuffs.

Aelita shakes her head.

“No. We’ve discussed this. We’re not doing that. Not with his type. He’s a walking heresy. An Abomination, and anywhere he stays or stands becomes corrupt, even prison. Kill him.”

Wells looks at her for a minute, then at me. He turns to his people and gives a small nod. Suddenly I’m looking down the barrels of an awful lot of guns.

“Did you forget what we talked about a few months ago over donuts? The dead man’s switch and the Mithras?”

She nods.

“Yes, if you die, the Mithras will be loosed and it will set fire to all creation. I remember. And I know you’re lying. You’re too attached to this world to let that happen.”

“You silly bitch, you’re going to kill everyone in L.A. because you’re too good to help them? How many Deadly Sins is that? Pride. Anger. Greed. Envy, too, maybe?”

Aelita turns away from me. I take a couple of steps toward her and a bullet rips into my right arm. It’s Ray, the Shut-Eye, getting back a little of his own. I look at him and he seems as surprised as anyone else that he fired. Without a verbal order, the other marshals are unsure if they should follow up.

Ray’s bullet is just a grazing shot. It ripped off a lot of skin near the deltoid. Surface shots can tear up a lot of nerves and nine times out of ten they hurt more than a killing shot. This one burns like a hot wire pressed against my arm from the shoulder to the wrist. I hate to admit it, but the pain catches me off guard. It comes quickly enough that I close my eyes reflexively when it hits. I don’t see Aelita turn to her people, but I hear her voice.

“You are the Golden Vigil. Holy Crusaders on a mission from Heaven. You have no reason or right to hesitate. Kill the Abomination.”

It’s her voice that hits me, not the threat. Something about the deep and beyond-time certainty of her tone. It’s like she’s shouting my death from the bottom of a well halfway across the galaxy and a billion miles deep. When she tells the marshals to kill me, she’s really giving the order to kill the world. She’s an angel. She’s seen stars and worlds come and go. We’re just mayflies living on this one. Maybe humans really are made in God’s image. That makes us harder to kill, but sweeter, too. Angels want revenge. Everything alive wants revenge, even if it’s simply for the affliction of existence. The sound of my death sentence and the death of everything I’ve ever known, cared about, or hated rattles and clangs in my skull, getting heavier every second as the weight of all the aeons it took to get from the Big Bang to my ears drops down on me. God went to all the trouble of creating the universe, the angels, the stars, and this world just to murder us. Alice and me and everyone else.

Even angels want revenge. Everything alive wants revenge.

The moment the thought crystallizes, Aelita wins. The solar winds and deadly vacuum freezing the empty space between the stars blows the last of Stark away. He falls into the dark. He doesn’t make a sound. He’s not surprised. He saw this moment coming. He fixes his eyes on me as he falls. That’s the last I see of him, the light reflected in his eyes as they go from white orbs to pinpoints to nothing. Then he’s gone and I’m alone.

Only the angel left in here. No humans allowed.

My eyes are still closed. The world has gone electric. I hear the rustle of fabric and the stretching of muscles and tendons as the marshals adjust their stances. Their heartbeats and breath go from fear to resignation. Ripples spread out like waves in a pond from their fingers as they increase the pressure on gun triggers. Metal shifts against lubricated metal. The muscles in their arms tighten. They’re already anticipating the explosions when the guns go off. The sound. Muzzle flash. Recoil. The pleasant reek of cordite.

I’m not angry or concerned. Time is slow and cold and it never stops. What’s going to happen will happen and nothing will stop it.

My arm burns and the heat throbs all the way down to the bone.

I hear a rattle of explosions as the marshals fire.

I’m not afraid. I see all this happening from the bottom of a well halfway across the galaxy and a billion miles deep.

The pain in my arm makes me double up. I’m burning alive.

When I open my eyes, the marshals’ bullets glide toward me in slow motion. I sweep my arm across them and my arm is made of fire. The bullets glow red, then blue, then white, and disappear like they’re made of steam. I swing my arm back and a dozen human faces gape at me. I look at my arm. It’s not burning, but it’s glowing red from the heat of the flaming Gladius in my hand. An angel’s weapon. Something Stark would never be capable of summoning, much less holding, but it’s my birthright.

The marshals don’t know what to do. They’re here for Stark, but Stark shouldn’t be able to manifest the sword. They don’t know that I’m not Stark anymore. I’d try to explain it to them, but they’re busy pulling triggers, filling the air with more slow-motion metal snowflakes. I brush them away like moths and keep moving.