“I learned a little Latin when I was in Lucifer’s library. I know lux is ‘light.’ What’s the other word?”
“‘Slayer.’ ‘Killer.’ Take your pick.”
“Fun. Do you know what it is?”
Traven runs a hand through his hair. I swear he has a few gray ones he didn’t have before.
“If we did, maybe we could have given him . . . something. The Magistrate doesn’t talk about it in specifics.”
“And when Blue Heaven couldn’t come up with the light killer?”
“The havoc killed anyone who ran. Then they burned Blue Heaven to the ground.”
So much for my former life as a savior. A lot of the people I try to save have a bad habit of not staying that way.
I look over my shoulder and across the camp.
“This all has to do with whatever is under the tarp, doesn’t it?”
“That would be my guess,” Traven says.
“Do you know what it is?”
“‘Salvation.’”
I give him a look.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s all the Magistrate will say about it.”
“You’re hauling around a ten-ton leap of faith.”
“Isn’t a leap of faith what salvation is?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
I feel stupid holding an unlit cigarette, so I put it back in the pack.
“Let me see if I have this straight,” I say. “The Magistrate and his party boys show up in Blue Heaven and have a barbecue. So, how is it you ended up joining them?”
He looks back at the tarp, too.
“When the Magistrate found out I was the librarian and Blue Heaven’s historian, he strongly encouraged me.”
“And who’s going to say no to King Kong?”
He draws a breath.
“I wish I could say that I was brave enough to refuse. I took some of the most important books, my pens and ink, and I’ve been with the havoc ever since. The Magistrate wants a record of the crusade. He thinks it will be important. So do I, but not for the reasons he thinks.”
I’m still bleeding and my left leg hurts. Horned Toad got my quadriceps and the meat isn’t healing fast enough for my taste. I shake blood off my boot onto the sand.
“They don’t have Nuremberg trials in Hell, Father.”
“No. But perhaps they do in Heaven.”
“Always the optimist,” I say, and he shrugs. “As for the other thing, I would have joined him, too.”