A Mystery of Light Read online

  It wasn’t a hard leap to make. “Archus Ramis,” Helo said. “You haven’t found him. He walked out of here with Cain’s pendant, and no one’s seen him since.”

  “As far as we can tell,” Magdelene said, “the Dreads aren’t being controlled, though we’re not sure what to look for. We’ve captured a handful for interrogation, and they seemed in possession of their wills.”

  Ebenezer shook his head. “I am still not convinced the pendant can exert that kind of control.”

  “It can,” Helo said. Ebenezer seemed so reluctant to believe what was right in front of his face.

  “That’s not the most pressing mystery,” Archus Lux said. “Why Ramis left and took the pendant is the key to all of this. He must have been blackmailed to do it.”

  “We’ve kicked this dead horse over and over,” Archus Mars said. “What’s done is done. It’s time to take it to the Dreads hard. That’s what we can do. We may never find Ramis, and it doesn’t matter. The mission is still the same.”

  Avadan. Helo had only met the warped Dread Loremaster a few times, and then only for brief interviews. He was crazy, and that was a fact. But there was a scheming snake in there, too. It was plausible that he could have taken a page out of Cain’s playbook and found some relative or friend of Ramis’s to hold over his head. Maybe it had been Athena, who had disappeared a few weeks before him. But Ramis didn’t seem the type to sell out the Ash Angel Organization no matter what the cost.

  Grand Archus Gideon raised his hands. “This discussion is not the reason we’re here. This is a tribunal, and there is only one matter left for consideration. Helo, is it accurate to say you would continue to search for and aid Aclima if released?”

  “Yes,” he said. “She deserves a chance.”

  “And Goliath?” Gideon asked.

  “I would not,” she said, grabbing Helo’s arm and turning toward him. “I’m sorry, Helo, but she made it clear she doesn’t want our help, and I think it’s best to leave her to her own fate.”

  It stung a little, but he was relieved, too. Maybe she could make better use of the last six months of her afterlife. He nodded to her.

  Archus Gideon folded his arms. “Then here is the judgment. Goliath, we will allow you to rejoin the Michaels as a soldier if you wish. If not, you are free to leave and pass the rest of your afterlife as you will. We could use your help, though.

  “Helo, until such time as we have captured and eliminated the Dread Loremaster, Aclima, you will be confined to Deep 7 and have access to the public areas of this installation. We will not imprison you unless you show us you need to be. I am sorry. If at any time you change your mind concerning Aclima, we will reconvene and reconsider your status here. Meeting adjourned. Primus, unlock the doors and finalize the tribunal records.”

  The door locks popped. “Records finalized,” Primus reported.

  Helo put his hands behind his head and slumped in his chair. He wasn’t going to let them keep him in this tin can for the rest of his afterlife. There had to be a way out, and he was going to find it.

  As the Archai stood and walked toward the door at the back of the dais, Archus Mars looked at him and then shook his head. The man did like to kill Dreads. Of all the Archuses, his anger made the most sense.

  Goliath stood and shoved her hands into her pockets.

  “What are you going to do?” Helo asked her.

  “Fight,” she said. “No offense, but six months of babysitting you and Aclima has me itching for a straight-up bullet party. A good slice and dice at Zion Alpha sounds like fun too. Not being in command will suck, but I’ll live.”

  “Can’t blame you,” Helo chuckled. “Thanks for everything, Goliath.”

  She smiled. “Well, if you get out, let’s have an Ascension party.”

  “Sure thing. May first,” Helo said. “I’ll be there.”

  Archus Simeon’s approach held up their conversation. The quiet head of the Sanctus looked a bit like a skinny Santa Claus with red cheeks and deep-blue eyes.

  “Excuse me, Helo,” he said. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” Goliath said. “Catch you later, Helo.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Simeon sat a chair away and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth for a few moments before he spoke. “If you remember, I once spoke about a program the Ash Angels ran to attempt to convert Dreads into Ash Angels.”

  “Yeah,” Helo said. Mars had thought it was the stupidest thing ever. “I remember it didn’t work very well.”

  “Statistically speaking, no,” Simeon said. “But we were able to help three of them, and I’m getting the feeling you see the world more like I do. I was a pastor before my death. I died protecting a junkie from a dealer who owed him money. My death straightened him out. So I understand what it means to sacrifice yourself for someone others don’t consider worthy. And I think I understand the worth of souls. There are few people who can see beyond the red aura, Helo.”

  Helo straightened in his seat. Maybe he had an ally here. “I can’t believe they’ve all forgotten she was an Ash Angel just six months ago.”

  Simeon nodded. “It’s even more extraordinary that she was able to convert at all. Six thousand years as a Dread and she turns! After that, I immediately asked for the funds and personnel to restart the Dread Recovery Program. I’d even hoped to use Aclima as a counselor.” Simeon’s eyes brightened. “Can you imagine how powerful it would be for a former Dread Loremaster to speak hope to a Dread?”

  “And they shot it down?” Helo asked.

  “Completely,” Simeon said. “They said they would reconsider it once we dealt with all the Dread Loremasters. That includes Aclima, as you know.”

  “So, what are your questions?”

  Simeon shifted in his chair, turning his body toward Helo. “What was your method for trying to convert her back into an Ash Angel?”

  “Doing good things. Helping other people, mainly,” Helo said. For the first time, it struck him that this man could have the answers he needed to help Aclima. This was someone who had spent years trying to help Dreads convert. “How did your Dread Recovery Program approach it?”

  “It had three main methods,” he said.

  “Ramis must have loved it,” Helo said. Ramis had a three-pronged approach to everything.

  Simeon looked at the floor for a moment. “He supported it for a time. But believe me when I say we did our research. We guided them to render service as you did, but we also employed cognitive behavioral therapy and a spiritual component tailored to beliefs they were familiar with before death. I’d hoped for a success rate of only 25 percent and didn’t even get close. Only three of the preliminary cohort of the hundred Dreads we captured converted.”

  “Not good,” Helo said. Maybe he didn’t have answers after all.

  “It wasn’t,” Simeon said. “They shut the program down after a year and burned the Dreads. Maybe I was delusional, as Mars says. Dreads are physically stuck, doomed to look like they did when they died. It almost seems like they are spiritually and emotionally stuck, too.

  “But ever since Aclima turned and then turned back, I’ve been thinking. You see, the three we managed to convert to Ash Angels had something in common: they were friends. We captured them out of a gambling house in Nevada. They’d run around together for years. When I look back at it, I think the friendship between them was what made the difference. Dreads are often solitary and selfish, and most of them we couldn’t even put in the same room with each other without fights between them or fights with us. It was messy, but I think we could have had more success once we refined our methods.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Helo asked.

  “Well, first, because I respect what you are trying to do. Nobody else will. Red means dead for most everyone around here. But I thought I would suggest something to you. When I was a pastor in my mortal life, I figured out that the people who
kept coming back to church didn’t do it because they loved the church. They did it because they loved the people, because they made connections. They say that the word is more powerful than the sword. I think a friend is more powerful than both.”

  “I’ve been a friend to Aclima,” Helo said. “Doesn’t seem to help.”

  “Has she let you be her friend, I mean since she turned back into a Dread?”

  Had she? When they were Ash Angels together, he could definitely feel it happening between them. Something good was growing, and Cain had killed it. Since then, she had kept him at arm’s length, both physically and emotionally. Everything she did—save what she did in anger—seemed almost mechanical, like someone assembling a cheap piece of furniture they didn’t like.

  “She was distant,” he said.

  Simeon nodded. “That is what I thought. I think the key to helping Aclima isn’t trying to help her even up some heavenly scorecard by piling up good deeds. If you want her back, you have to get her to let you back in. When you defended her against her fellow Dreads in the Hammer Bar and Grill, you managed to sneak into some window in her heart she had left half open. That’s what set her on the path to Ash Angelhood in the first place. I’m guessing there’s another open window in that old heart. You have to find it to find a way back in it again.”

  Not the advice he had expected, but something rang true about it. Just before she had heart traveled, she had kissed him on the cheek, thanked him. That window had to be in there somewhere, but where? He leaned his head back and looked at the ornate nickel light fixtures of what was now his prison. He had to get out, find her, and take another run at it.

  “Thanks,” Helo said. “Not sure I’ll ever get out of here and have a chance to try.”

  Simeon stood and winked. “Where there’s a will, there is a way. Anyway, you should really get a look at Receiving here at Deep 7. Quite amazing, especially around dawn. Thank you for speaking with me. Godspeed.”

  Chapter 4

  Ashakaz

  “Still can’t come in here,” the Michael Guard said for the sixth day in a row. “You keep coming around and Diarchus Joan’s going to hear about it.”

  “At ease, soldier,” Helo said. “Just taking a walk.”

  When Grand Archus Gideon had stranded him at Deep 7, Helo hadn’t given any thought to what he would do to pass the time. Sneaking into Reception to see what Archus Simeon wanted him to see seemed impossible. Sure, they let him wander down the hallway where all the heart-travel reception rooms were, the same place where he had appeared a week ago. But at the end of that hallway was a hardened door with two heavily armed Michaels on guard at all times. Even if he could drop the two massive men, the door behind it looked as thick as a bank vault and was biometrically secured.

  He and the guards knew that behind that door was the hardened elevator leading to the outside world, and they were also likely aware of why he would be interested in it. Even if he had no other motivation to get free, after a week inside the impenetrable and inescapable Deep 7, he was longing for a window or a porthole or even a peephole so he could reassure himself the outside world still existed.

  He still had no idea where Deep 7 was. Was it above ground? Below ground? It had to be centrally located in the United States to ensure that any heart ash in an envelope could make it there in twenty-four hours without difficulty. It had to be near a big airport, and therefore a big city. His current guess was Saint Louis, Missouri. Maybe below the famous St. Louis Arch in some underground complex.

  After glancing over his shoulder at the two guards behind him, he walked back toward the lobby. His phone, which had no outside access, said 10:12 p.m. Maybe he could catch the news or find a basketball game on or something. A few Ash Angels lounged on the plush leather couches, their white auras reminding him of how he lacked one. A thin Ash Angel man from maintenance glanced up at him and quickly returned to his reading.

  To his chagrin, the story circulating about him was that he was an unhinged, lovestruck Ash Angel out of his mind for a hot Dread Loremaster. And the looks he got ranged from disgust, like the one Archus Mars had thrown him, to sickened disappointment, like the time his mom had caught him and his brother shooting the robins in their backyard with a BB gun. He’d never looked at a bird the same way since her stern lecture.

  Three TVs hung in the lobby. One permanently showed the news. Another two off to the side could be changed at anyone’s discretion. Both showed flashy holiday commercials, Santa Claus and Christmas trees, and attractive families in perfect sweaters cradling hot cocoa in their hands. He smiled wistfully. Life in the real world. A life he would never know again.

  “Helo.”

  The voice startled him. A female Michael had approached him from behind, her brown face all business.

  “Yeah?”

  “Diarchus Joan wants to meet you on the security level immediately,” she said. “Follow me.”

  Helo nodded.

  Well did Helo remember the security level. The first time he had come to Deep 7, he had busted one of their interrogation chairs when they’d tried to accuse him of collaborating with Aclima. Was this going to be another interrogation? Well, they could ask all the questions they wanted to. He really didn’t have anything to share that would do them any good.

  But the moment the elevator door opened and Diarchus Joan turned toward him, he knew something was wrong. Her green eyes were brooding, her mouth turned down. She was a redhead, like Magdelene, but kept her hair short.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “They didn’t say I had a choice,” Helo answered, leaning his back against the nickel-plated walls.

  “Dismissed,” Joan said to the guard, who retreated into the elevator.

  “As you know,” Joan said, “I am in charge of the security of this station. For six months we have imprisoned a Dread Loremaster here, something we have never done before.”

  “Ashakaz,” Helo said.

  “Yes,” Joan confirmed. “She gave us intel in exchange for her continued existence. She has proved useful in filling in some missing lore about Dreads. But between you and me, her well is running dry, and we had planned to burn her soon.”

  Helo folded his arms. “Why are you telling me this? You want me to do it?”

  “No, no,” Joan said, face pinched. “It’s not that. Yesterday she began behaving . . . strangely.”

  “How?”

  “She practically stopped moving and talking,” Joan answered. “According to the guards, she usually won’t shut up or sit still. But after sunset this evening, she scrawled something on her arm with her fingernail and then started singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” nonstop.”

  Helo’s eyes widened. “Really? What’d she write on her arm?”

  Joan’s eyes met his. “Helo.”

  Helo’s skin crawled. What did Ashakaz want with him? “You want me to talk to her?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything will be recorded, of course. Did Aclima tell you anything about Ashakaz?”

  “Aclima hates her,” Helo said. “Almost as much as she hated Cain. She told me never to trust her, that she was a liar to the core.”

  Joan nodded. “She is a skilled actress. She can switch moods and personalities like people change clothes. Is that why Aclima hates her?”

  “No,” Helo said. “She hates her because she seduced or killed every man Aclima tried to have a relationship with after she left Cain. On Cain’s orders.”

  Joan shook her head. “I hadn’t expected that. Come on. I’ll show you where she is.”

  He followed Diarchus Joan down the hallway, passing the entrance to the armory—a guarded door as thick as the one leading out to the hardened elevator. Deep 7 only had six detention rooms, and as they approached the last one at the end of the hall, the muffled strains of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” haunted the hallway. Ashakaz was no singer, her voice reminiscent of a tone-deaf cat.

  Two guards stood sentry at Ashakaz’s door
, a giant slab of metal with a wire-mesh porthole and door slit. Diarchus Joan stopped and faced him. “This is it. You want the guards in with you?”

  “No,” Helo said. “Open it.”

  The guards looked to Diarchus Joan, who nodded. One put his eyes to the iris scanner to the left of the door, and the locked popped. The singing continued unabated as the guard pulled the door open and let him in.

  The twelve-by-twelve room had the same metallic walls and lighted floor as the rest of the level, a solitary recliner and side table the only furnishings. A rectangular recess in the back wall allowed for a place to lie down on a thin mattress. Ashakaz stood dead center in the room. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, her aura blazing red, face slack, and she was singing the song. She was like an animatronic exhibit at a museum. Seeing her in an Ash Angel jumpsuit was weird.

  The door lock clicked shut behind him. Helo watched her for a moment. What had happened to her? Had she snapped? He doubted it. She’d been alive for six thousand years. Surely six months of imprisonment wouldn’t drive her crazy all of a sudden.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I looked over Jordan and what did I see? Comin’ for to carry me home!”

  “What do—”

  “I saw a band of angels coming after me. Comin’ for to carry me home!”

  He snapped his fingers in her face. Slapped her lightly. Shook her shoulders. It was useless. It was like she didn’t even know he was there or even where she was.

  “Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin’ for to carry me home!”

  He reached down and took her left arm, turning the interior forearm toward him. Instead of Helo was scrawled hallow. She had used her fingernail to distress the flesh and then let it bleed a little to highlight the word. He took the other arm. It said Helo. Helo Hallow.