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  “Let Father Storm get on with it,” Dolorem admonished.

  Dallin shifted his weight, wooden pew squealing. “Just calling it like I see it.”

  Helping out at the Redemption Motorcycle Club for the last year had accustomed Helo to the strong feelings and unorthodox faith of some of God’s more colorful children. The great blessing of their raw approach to everything was that no one pretended to be good. What they felt, they said. What they did, they confessed. Everyone knew the pain and stupidity of everyone else.

  “Like I was saying,” Helo continued, “I had to let her go. But I ran across her almost a year later.”

  Dallin perked up again. “Did you—”

  “No, I didn’t do what you’re probably thinking, Brother Dallin,” Helo answered, eliciting a few chuckles. “What happened is a part of the message here. You see, she was genuinely sorry for what she had done. I could see it in her face. She had changed. So I ask you, did I have the right to be mean to her or hold a grudge?”

  “Of course!” Dallin piped in. “She cheated on you, dude! I can’t believe you didn’t put some boot tread on that guy’s face! You don’t let no one touch your girl!”

  Helo held up his hands. “Look, look. Here’s the point. This is the Redemption Motorcycle Club. We’re about second chances here, right? So when Peter didn’t want to eat all that stuff on the blanket, God said in Acts 10:15 . . .” Helo ran his finger down the page. He barely had the New Testament sorted from the Old. “Okay, here it is. God says, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call common.’”

  “I don’t get it,” Dallin announced.

  A lady biker, Luna, thrust her hand in the air. “I know! It meant Peter could have a barbecue with all those animals and birds on the blanket!”

  “That’s right,” Helo said.

  Dallin frowned. “What’s that got to do with Father Storm’s wife cheating on him?”

  “It means it was okay for Father Storm to sleep with her again,” Lula answered helpfully.

  “No!” Helo said, trying to regain control of his sermon. “That’s not what I meant. What I meant was it wouldn’t be right for me to think she was a bad person when she had changed and God had made her clean again. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  Dallin shrugged. “I didn’t think she was a bad person. I mean, if your lovemaking is as boring as your sermons, it was your fault she ran off.” The room erupted in laughter. Helo stared balefully at Dallin, who stared right back with a smug expression on his face.

  Helo quickly wrapped it up, and the meeting ended. He and Dolorem stood at the back of the chapel, shaking hands with everyone as they left. Dallin gave Helo’s arm a firm squeeze on the way out. “You should have messed that guy up, Father Storm. You don’t let no one touch your girl. That’s gospel, bro.”

  Helo nodded politely as a number of guttural engines roared to life in the parking lot, drowning out every other sound. Dolorem pulled the door shut and locked it while the windows rattled with the thunder of their congregation’s departure.

  “I think that’s it, Dolorem,” Helo said as they walked toward the small office at the rear of the chapel. “You keep me up front and pretty soon nobody’s going to come to these Tuesday meetings. I am no good at preaching.”

  Dolorem slapped him on the back. “You’re getting better. It’s just the heat. Puts them to sleep every time.”

  Helo ran his fingers through his long biker hair. Dolorem was due to Ascend in three weeks and wanted someone to take over the Redemption Motorcycle Club when he was gone. Helo couldn’t wrap his head around taking the job. Sermons? Counseling? Motorcycle repair? Of the three, he was best at fixing the bikes, and even in that, he couldn’t match Dolorem’s mastery of the machines’ inner workings.

  “Look, Dolorem, you need to find someone else, some other Old Master, maybe.”

  “We’re not talking about that right now. You remember what today is?”

  “Tuesday—movie night.” It was a tradition with Dolorem, and it was a chance to feel normal. Giving sermons wasn’t normal.

  They stepped into the cramped office and Dolorem flicked on the light, the two fluorescent bulbs slowly building to an acceptable brightness. A single manila-yellow desk, metallic and beat up, held a mess of papers and an ancient computer. Along the side wall were two metal cabinets the same color as the desk that held all the resources for Dolorem’s sermons he had collected from newspapers and copied from books since he had started the club a couple years back.

  Dolorem plopped his biker girth into a swivel chair half as big as his butt and clicked away on the computer screen. “Looks like our show is at six thirty tonight.”

  “We make enough on collections today to afford the tickets?” Helo asked.

  “No. But we’re not buying tonight.”

  Helo tossed his Bible on the corner of the desk. “Are we sneaking in?”

  Dolorem swiveled to face him. “We have company tonight. They’re paying.”

  “Some Old Masters again?”

  Dolorem turned away. “You could say that.”

  Over the last few months, Helo had met several Ash Angels from the Old Masters network. They would stop by the Redemption Motorcycle Club, pass on news, and look for opportunities to do some good in the area. Many Old Masters lived a nomadic lifestyle, blowing in and out of cities like the weather. Whenever they were in town, Dolorem would invite them along for their Tuesday entertainment.

  “But,” Dolorem continued, “we’re going incognito tonight—or cognito, however you want to look at it. No biker personas. Morph into something mid-twenties. And lose the gut. You don’t wear it well.”

  Helo laughed. “And you do?”

  “Gut management is like swords. You have to train to get good at it. You’ve gotten pretty good with the swords, but the gut? Still a novice. You’ve got to know when to swing it and plump it and suck it up. One second.” He slid open one of his metal drawers and fished around inside. “Don’t remember that you saw this.” Dolorem removed a Planters Peanuts jar full of money and unscrewed the lid.

  “I thought we were broke,” Helo said.

  “We are. Just a little insurance is all,” Dolorem explained. “Look, here’s a hundred bucks. Go buy some pants that don’t smell like a barbecue and a shirt that has actual sleeves. Maybe some cologne. And make it snappy.”

  Helo took the money. “So the Old Masters we’re meeting are women.”

  Dolorem shrugged and put the bottle back, slamming the file cabinet shut. Helo shook his head and walked out of the office. Since the beginning of his training with Dolorem, the Old Master had pestered him to put Terissa behind him and move on. Helo felt he had moved on, but Dolorem insisted that moving on wasn’t really moving on until you had actually gone somewhere. Apparently that somewhere was on a date.

  Helo cranked his Harley, concentrating first on trimming his gut a bit and losing the bushy goatee he had come to favor during his tenure at the club. His hair he would shorten, too. He had hardly morphed in months, save for some of Dolorem’s detail drills—sunspots, sunburns, crow’s feet, ear hair, nose hair, and on and on. While Helo thought he had improved, his speed hadn’t. Dolorem wasn’t as harsh as Cassandra about his lethargic changes, but to be prepared for Tuesday Movie night, Helo knew he would have to get his morphing game face on.

  After a whirlwind shopping trip, Helo pulled into the Megaplex at 6:10, a little later than the planned six o’clock. The morph he had finished in the nick of time. The hundred-buck shopping spree had turned into a test of frugality. It turned out that new pants and a new shirt really needed a new pair of shoes. His black biker boots and ratty socks didn’t go well with the blue polo and dark jeans he had chosen. The new pair of brown Sketchers and a big bag of tube socks brought his total to $99.24 after tax. Seventy-six cents jangled in his pocket.

  He threw open the glass doors, scanning the evening crowd for Dolorem. The Old Master had morphed into the geeky bow-tie persona he had used when
infiltrating the Hammer Bar and Grill. Next to him stood a redhead, and though she was morphed younger than Helo had ever seen her, the tall, slender Magdelene was unmistakable. He stopped dead in his tracks for a moment. Why was she here? The former head of the Gabriels division was one of the Ash Angel Organization leadership Helo had admired for her good sense and thoughtful decisions, though after the Dreads had downed four airliners, she had been let go from her position as Archus, Ramis taking over.

  Next to Magdelene, back to him, stood a behemoth of a woman dressed in black spandex shorts and a black T-shirt stretched by her jiggling girth. A rim of fat hung over the sides of the shorts, her meaty legs bent slightly inward at the knees. Beneath her short curly hair hung a tiny pink backpack nearly engulfed between the fat of her shoulder blades. Like Dolorem and Magdelene, the woman had no aura, and Helo wondered if she was a normal or another Blank.

  “Hey, Magdelene,” Helo said, joining the group.

  Magdelene smiled at him and gave him a polite hug. She wore a youthful pair of skinny jeans and a white pullover shirt with a scooped neck. “It’s really good to see you again. Jason Storm, right? Call me Jill.”

  “Right, Jill. It’s good to see you too.” He had forgotten not to use her Ash Angel name. He was slipping already.

  Helo turned to the other woman. She was darkly complected, her olive skin spattered with zits. Her engorged face regarded him softly. The eyes were familiar.

  “What are you looking at, Mr. Storm?” she said with a scowl, hands on the ring of fat around her hips.

  The accent was unmistakable. “Aclima?” Her face split in a grin, and Helo laughed. She grabbed him and pulled him in, drowning him in her cellulite softness.

  “I’m impressed you were able to recognize me,” she said, releasing him. “You think you can handle this much woman tonight?”

  “I think I can manage,” he said. Aclima and Magdelene. Something was up. Dolorem usually shunned contact with the Ash Angel Organization.

  “Well, I do need to change,” Aclima said. “I wanted to see if you could recognize me through this little disguise of mine. It’s one of my favorite personas. You have no idea how wonderful it is to go from the woman whose face could launch a thousand ships to the one that could sink them. Can you give me a hand, Jill?”

  “Sure. Be right back, you two.”

  Aclima winked at him as the two wandered off to the bathrooms. Dolorem watched them go, adjusting his bow tie. “Let’s grab some chow.”

  “So, Old Masters, huh?”

  Dolorem smiled. “Well, it certainly applies to Aclima. Just didn’t want to scare you off. They contacted me a couple of days ago. While I certainly don’t want you getting tangled up in the Ash Angel Organization, I always did have a soft spot for Maggie. Besides, Aclima. I mean, you’ve got to show up for her.”

  He was right about that. Helo watched the pair disappear around a corner. “Did they say what they wanted?”

  “Nope,” Dolorem said.

  They crossed to the concessions counter and got in line behind a trio of twenty-something males dressed in long athletic shorts and tank tops. Dolorem craned around them and down the line, trying to spy what treats awaited behind the glass enclosure—as if he didn’t already have them memorized.

  “So,” Helo asked, “what am I supposed to do with a date like Aclima? Talk about the weather? I mean, everything I could possibly do or say she’s probably heard and done a thousand times.”

  Dolorem turned to him and shrugged. “This is the first time you’ve really had a chance to talk to her. Just get to know her. Let her get to know you. That’s dating. That too hard for you?”

  Helo lowered his voice to a whisper. “She’s six thousand years old. How am I supposed to be interesting to someone like her?”

  Dolorem placed his hands on Helo’s shoulders. “Don’t try to be interesting. It’s the best way to not be interesting. Look, Helo, remember your bizarre chivalry at the Hammer Bar and Grill? That changed her life. Just keep going down that road and you’ll be fine. Now, let me focus on the food.”

  That night at the Hammer Bar and Grill still burned in Helo’s memory. Aclima’s red aura had put him off as to how gorgeous she was when he first met her. To think she had been a Dread for millennia sent a chill up his spine. What had she seen and done in the vast scope of her life? How much would she even want to talk about her past? Helo could hardly think of a more intimidating date than Aclima—or a more fascinating one.

  The line moved slowly, but once they arrived, Dolorem rewarded the movie theater by buying up enough snacks to last for twelve movies. He clearly had more money stashed at the club than he let on. Helo balanced a mega bucket of popcorn and two sodas after shoving candy bags and boxes in every spare pocket he had. Dolorem did the same, and they walked carefully to the line of people waiting for the theater to open, finding themselves behind the same trio of young men, who regarded them and their overabundance of snacks with snide grins.

  Dolorem’s eyes widened speculatively. “Well, Helo, I think your day just got a whole lot better.”

  “Why?”

  Dolorem directed his gaze behind him. Helo turned. Aclima had finished changing. She and Magdelene spoke quietly with one another as they walked toward them. Helo nearly dumped his popcorn bucket. Aclima had returned to her “launch a thousand ships” form, her lustrous dark hair framing a youthful, flawless face. This was the Aclima Helo had seen in Cain’s memory when they’d been connected aboard the Tempest, a memory of a slender young woman who had been Abel’s wife, and whose beauty had set Cain’s jealous thoughts aflame.

  Her hair hung well below her shoulders, full and wavy. While appearing about the age of a college freshman, her big almond eyes radiated nothing of innocence or naiveté; this was a woman of the world fully in control of who she was. She dressed simply, not a single jewel or bracelet or earring to adorn her. Cutoff jean shorts, a white, spaghetti-strap camisole, and simple brown sandals were her entire ensemble. The little backpack had gone missing.

  Helo smiled, and she smiled back, full lips parting. The combination of her perfect white teeth and olive skin was stunning. Her walk was killing every guy in the room, the three young men in front of them having gone instantly silent.

  Helo turned to Dolorem. “You know, this was a great idea.”

  “I thought you might see it that way. She’s one step away from God’s perfect mold, you know.”

  Aclima walked up and took one of the extra-large cups of soda out of Helo’s arms. “For me?”

  “Yes. I’ve got candy, too. We weren’t sure what you liked so we got a little of everything. You look great.”

  “Look great?” she said, face mockingly disappointed.

  “Well, yeah.” Had he said something wrong?

  She took a sip from her straw, eyes turning playful. “I see. You’re going to need to work on your compliments. ‘Looks great’ is dreadfully generic. A little rusty?”

  Rusty? What had he said to Terissa in that bar so many years ago? Yep. “You look great.” Maybe she had a point. “I’ll work on it.”

  Magdelene took Dolorem’s arm. “Well, not everyone can be Shakespeare. I’m just glad for a night off.”

  One of the young men in front of them approached, his two friends watching from behind. Helo sized him up. His tank top put his sculpted arms and shoulders on display. His hair was as black as his athletic shorts, face confident and eyes riveted on Aclima. On his shins were tattooed the letters MMA in green ink.

  “Hey, girl,” he said.

  Aclima’s large eyes regarded him without expression. Could the guy see the age and experience in her gaze?

  “You’re speaking to me?” she said.

  “You know it girl! Who else would I be talking to? I’m Scott, by the way.”

  “Scott, I assure you I am fully a woman now.”

  His smile widened, boyish intensity exuding from him in waves. “Yes, you are. How about you come up with my friends an
d me and you can show me what you got?”

  “She’s with me,” Helo put in.

  “We gotta let the lady choose, dude! No offense, man. A smoke show like this likes to trade up. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  Helo could understand where Scott was coming from. His hormones were kerosene, and the way Aclima looked a lit box of matches. Still, he needed to buzz off. Helo opened his mouth to say as much, but Aclima jumped in first.

  “I’ll tell you what, Scott,” she said. “I’ll come with you if you can pass a little test.”

  “Anything you want, girl.”

  “My date here has abs of steel. If you can hit those well-developed abs hard enough to make him blink, I’ll gladly spend the evening with you and your friends. Deal?”

  “No problem,” Scott said gladly. He turned to Helo. “You game, bro?”

  “Sure,” Helo responded, morphing his ab muscles to add mass. Doing so seemed effortless at the moment.

  “You sure?” Scott asked, face cocky. “I’m MMA, dude. You know what that means?”

  “Mumbling Monkey Ass?”

  Scott’s face fell and his index finger flicked out. “Don’t disrespect MMA, or I’ll mess you up.”

  “Whatever. Give it your best shot.” Helo flared his arms, jumbo popcorn in one and jumbo soda in the other. Scott assumed a fighter’s stance, hands up and feet parted. “You might want to put the snacks down.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  Aclima stood off to Scott’s side. She winked, and Helo fought down the urge to smile. As Dolorem stuffed a handful of popcorn in his mouth, Magdelene glanced around nervously, as if scared someone might figure out who and what they were. Scott bounced up and down, breathed heavily in and out, and unloaded. Helo tensed his muscles and shifted his left foot back for a little extra support.

  Scott’s blow took no chances. He aimed not for the middle of the stomach but right for the solar plexus in an attempt to make it hurt and blast the air out of his lungs. Helo’s muscles hardened. His unyielding Ash Angel body took the hit without complaint, Helo keeping his eyes wide and unblinking as he absorbed the force. A single piece of yellowy popcorn fell from the bucket. Nearby patrons watched in horror as they waited for the reaction that never came.