A Hundred Words for Hate

  Francis asked the barkeep if he had any gin, and the man just laughed, pouring him a jelly jar of something from a brown jug that he pulled up from the floor.

  “This’ll do,” Francis said as he paid for his drink. He returned the man’s smile and brought the glass to his lips, taking a sip. The moonshine burned as it went down, and he let it. He liked the warm feel of the illegal whiskey. If he’d wanted to, he could have shut it all down, canceling out the effects of the alcohol with just a thought.

  But where was the fun in that?

  Francis leaned on the bar and scanned the room, looking for his target. He saw no one who matched the image the Thrones had placed in his brain, but if they said the target would be here, it would be. All Francis had to do was relax, have himself a drink or two, and wait.

  He found an old stool against a wall and sat. It was a strange place for the Thrones to have sent him; there wasn’t a renegade angel or supernatural being to be found, just some poor folks looking to let off a little steam.

  Francis finished his drink and slid off his stool to get another.

  “Hit me again,” he told the barkeep, handing him the empty jelly jar.

  “Still want that gin?” the man asked, pouring more of the whiskey from the jug into the glass.

  “What’s gin?” Francis asked.

  The barkeep got a big kick out of that, laughing up a storm.

  Francis stayed by the bar this time, deciding that he’d like to share the company of the man tending the bar. He looked like a good egg, and good eggs were hard to come by these days.

  “Never seen you in here before,” the barkeep commented as he poured a drink for a little old lady who looked as though she could be on her way to church services.

  “That’s because I’ve never been here before,” Francis answered.

  The barkeep nodded, and then held out his hand. “Name’s Melvin,” he said.

  Francis stared at the hand for a moment before taking it firmly in his.

  “Francis,” he said as the two shook.

  “So, what do you think of the Pelican?” Melvin asked, taking some more jelly jars from a wooden crate and placing them on top of the bar.

  “Nice,” Francis said as he took a short sip of the white lightning. “I imagine it helps people forget their problems for a while.”

  “It certainly does that,” Melvin said. “And it puts some money in my pocket.”

  Francis looked at the barkeep over the rim of his glass. “Is this place yours?”

  “It is,” Melvin said. “I pay the man who used to own the general store here a slight fee for the use of his premises, but I maintain the place, keep the jugs full, and bring in the entertainment.”

  “Entertainment?” Francis laughed. “You’ve got entertainment here?”

  “I sure do,” Melvin said. “Don’t tell me you never heard of the Swamp Angel?” he asked incredulously.

  Francis shook his head.

  “Then you’re about to now,” Melvin said. “She’s comin’ on as soon as the band is ready.” The barkeep gestured with his chin to an area where a sheet had been strung like a curtain. Francis could see some men and their instruments taking their places on a makeshift stage.

  The crowd gradually started to notice as well, clapping as the men sat down on old chairs and stools and began to tune up their musical instruments. There was a very thin fiddle player, a guy who easily could have tipped the scales at three hundred pounds with an old bowler hat on top of his big head and a beat-up guitar in his lap, and a third man at an old piano.

  Instruments tuned, the musicians gave one another a look that said they were ready and the place became eerily quiet.

  Then from behind the curtain she stepped, a striking woman wearing a simple white dress that smacked of being handmade. She wore no jewelry or makeup. Her skin was like mahogany, and Francis wasn’t sure whether he’d ever seen in the flesh a creature quite so beautiful. She stood on the small stage, looking out over the silent audience, and he was reminded of a scared little animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

  For a moment, he thought she might take off, jumping from the stage and heading out the door in sheer terror, but he watched as she took a couple of deep breaths and looked at the smiles of the three men who were ready to accompany her. Slowly she nodded.

  The men began to play, and she began to sing.

  Francis had heard the celestial choirs of Heaven, but they couldn’t hold a candle to what he was hearing now. He stood statue still, whiskey in hand, with no urge to drink it. All he wanted to do was listen as the woman—the Swamp Angel—sang from the very depths of her soul and, in turn, touched every single soul in the room.

  It was a shame he was going to have to kill her.

  Francis left the memory of Louisiana and the sweet, sweet sound of the Swamp Angel’s voice, and returned to Hell.

  Louisiana? he questioned as he slowly emerged from the mire of unconsciousness. I’ve never been to fucking Louisiana . . . especially not during the Depression.

  But he had. He just hadn’t remembered until the crazy angel that had saved him stuck a knife into his brain.

  The former Guardian opened his eyes with a pathetic yelp, recalling the feeling of the glowing blade as it violated his skull.

  He was on his back facing the ceiling of the cave, stalagmites—or were they stalactites? He never could remember—hanging down. He tried to move, but couldn’t.

  Again he heard the rumbling sounds of Hell changing somewhere off in the distance, and he knew he was still a guest in the Magick Kingdom.

  Francis tried to move again, and this time realized that his wrists and ankles were bound by thick leather restraints.

  “What the fuck?” he said aloud, his voice sounding weird as it bounced around the confines of the cave.

  Fighting a wave of dizziness, he lifted his head for a better view of his surroundings. His stomach flipped, threatening to make him yak up his insides, but he really hadn’t eaten anything since . . . When was the last time he had eaten? How long had he been in Hell? Time moved differently here; it could have been days, or maybe even months.

  What I wouldn’t give for a Hot Pocket about now.

  Through bleary eyes he saw the angel. His back was to him, and he appeared to be working, standing in front of a slab of black rock that seemed to have grown up out of the floor. And there was somebody else . . . someone who looked to be in even worse shape than Francis lying atop the slab. The Hellion was curled in a tight ball of nastiness at the angel’s feet.

  “Hey,” Francis squeaked, his throat tight and dry.

  “You’re awake,” the angel commented, continuing to work.

  The Hell beast lifted its obscene head and hissed.

  “Let me just finish here and I’ll be right with you,” said the angel.

  Then he dropped something wet and red. It plopped to the floor of the cave with a spatter, and the Hellion reacted immediately, snatching it up into its awful mouth, chewing eagerly.

  “Glad you won’t be needing that anymore,” the angel said with a chuckle to the being laid out before him.

  Then he turned to face Francis. The front of the angel’s robes, already filthy with the dirt and soot of Hell, were now spattered with blood. He held his glowing blade in a relaxed hand, and Francis again recalled the agony as it had entered his head.

  Though the muscles in his neck were screaming, the former Guardian angel could not—would not—lower his head. He could see the other figure lying upon the slab now. It had once been an angel. Francis guessed he was likely one of the few who had managed to escape the tortures of Tartarus, reverting to barbarism on the plains of Hell. Now his stomach had been opened, the skin peeled back.

  Something that could have been a mountain crumbling roared somewhere outside the cave, and the angel tilted his shaggy head slightly, listening to the sound.

  “The changes are coming closer,” he said. “I wonder what it will be like w
hen he’s finished?”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Francis demanded. A while ago he had expected to be dead, but now? He had a front-row seat on the crazy bus and it didn’t show any sign of slowing down soon.

  “It’s all about change, really,” the angel said. The glowing scalpel disappeared somewhere inside his robes. “Take this poor beast, for example.” He gestured toward the angel on the slab.

  “You wouldn’t believe the changes his body has undergone, living the way he did . . . changes that I never foresaw, and I was partially responsible for his design.”

  Responsible for his design? Who is this madman? The thought coursed through Francis’s fevered brain as he fought to keep his head up.

  “His internal workings have evolved to survive the rigors of Hell,” the angel continued.

  Francis had no idea what this lunatic was talking about, but as long as it kept him from using the light-saber scalpel to open him up, he could keep right on talking.

  “To survive what is coming, we must all evolve. I learned that quite a long time ago, but I’ve only recently come to truly understand it.”

  The angel approached Francis, and he squirmed on the slab, but to no avail. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  “But I knew that things were finally about to come around when I found you out there. It was a surprise, but not really.”

  The angel reached out with a bloody hand to stroke Francis’s bald head.

  “I knew you would be coming; I just didn’t know when.”

  The scalpel was in the angel’s hand again, and all Francis could do was stare in horror at the figure looming above him.

  “I was always proud of the Guardian’s design,” he said.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Francis growled.

  “You don’t remember me . . . yet,” the angel said with a smile that would have given Charles Manson the creeps. “But you will.”

  He leaned toward Francis, one blood-encrusted hand holding the former Guardian angel’s head steady as the scalpel once more slipped effortlessly into his skull.

  Like a hot knife cutting through butter.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Remy helped Jon bury Nathan as the sun started to set over the Arizona desert.

  They were silent as they shoveled dirt over the poor man’s battered corpse with tools they had found after foraging through the wreckage of the biodome.

  “Tell me about him,” Remy said, desperate to ease the uncomfortable silence.

  “Nothing much to tell, really,” Jon said. He had begun to place large rocks atop the fresh earth in an attempt to keep the desert predators away. “He was a good man . . . a kind man, and I loved him.”

  Jon looked at Remy with a sad smile as the tears began to flow down his dirty cheeks.

  “There, I said it.” He looked skyward. “I said it, and the heavens didn’t open up, and fire didn’t rain down from the sky.”

  “Did you think it would?” Remy asked him.

  Jon shrugged. “Relationships like ours were frowned upon in the Sons,” he said. “So we kidded ourselves by ignoring our true feelings . . . lying to everyone around us, as well as ourselves.”

  The man looked back to the fresh grave, then bent down to retrieve more rocks.

  “How pathetic is it that only after he is dead can I say it out loud.” Jon shook his head in disgust. “You should have left me to die under the rubble.”

  “He knew that you loved him,” Remy said.

  Jon laughed bitterly. “Yeah, I’m sure he did.”

  “I can sense these things better than most, but one would have to be in a coma to not see and feel the connection you two had.”

  Jon knelt beside the grave. He stayed like that for a little while.

  “Thank you for that,” he said finally.

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Well, thank you anyway.”

  “You’re welcome,” Remy said.

  Jon stared at the grave again. “It’s kind of funny,” he said. “I can still feel him around me.”

  “Not such a bad thing, is it?”

  “No, not at all. It’s really kind of nice.”

  “We should probably think about going,” Remy suggested.

  “Yeah,” Jon said.

  “From what I remember of the map, we’re going to Louisiana, right?” Remy asked.

  “Louisiana it is,” Jon agreed. “But we’ll have to be careful. It has to be done just right, or it could be disastrous.” He seemed to almost physically shake off his emotions, and was suddenly very professional. “The first thing we need to do is find some batteries for my hearing aid, and then get ourselves cleaned up. I doubt the Daughters of Eve would talk to us if we look as though we’ve just fought a war.”

  “Do you think they will talk to us?” Remy was curious, given the feud between the two groups.

  “Sure,” Jon said. “Right before they find out who we are, and try to kill us.”

  Fernita Green reached into her bucket of filthy water and removed a rag.

  “Here,” she said to Mulvehill, handing him the dripping cloth. “Start scrubbing. Anyplace you see this writing.”

  For some reason he took it, soapy water dripping from his hand to patter on the threadbare carpet.

  “Listen, Fernita,” Mulvehill started. “Why don’t we talk about this . . . ?”

  “There’s no time to talk,” the old woman snapped as she frantically rubbed at a blackened smudge on the wall. “I have to get it all off.”

  Mulvehill wasn’t familiar with the scrawl, but it looked old, and he got an odd, itchy feeling at the backs of his eyes when he looked at it for too long.

  “All the things I forgot,” Fernita said as she scrubbed. “The more I wipe away, the more I remember. . . . It was horrible . . . just horrible.”

  The old woman was sobbing as she dunked her brush into the bucket beside her and brought it out again to scrub at the wall.

  Cautiously Mulvehill knelt beside her, feeling the spilled water from the bucket soak into the knees of his slacks as he gently put his arm around her. “It’s all right,” he tried to console her. “Everything is going to work itself out. Why don’t we take a break, talk a little, and see what—”

  “They were burnin’,” the old woman said, staring at him with eyes red from crying. “All those folks inside, they all got burned up because of me.”

  Mulvehill felt horrible. Fernita Green was in genuine pain; he could practically see it eating away at her.

  “He was trying to kill me,” she said between sobs, and then with a desperate moan she attacked the wall again, rubbing with all her might to make the markings disappear.

  “Who, Fernita?” Mulvehill asked. “Who was trying to kill you?”

  The old woman slumped forward, sliding down the wall until her face and hands were touching the ground. She was exhausted, barely able to hold herself up anymore.

  “The angel,” she said into the floor, and he thought for sure that he must have misheard her words.

  “Who?” he asked again, squeezing her tighter.

  “The angel,” she said again, raising her head. “The angel wanted to kill me.”

  “Shit,” Mulvehill said, fingers of icy dread tickling the length of his spine. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

  Jon and Remy were at a motel on the outskirts of the Sonoran Desert, cleaning up before beginning their search for the Daughters of Eve.

  The van from the biodome had been singed a bit in the explosion, but it had proven to still be road-worthy. They’d made a quick stop at the closest megastore, picking up some fresh clothes, a map, and Jon’s hearing-aid batteries.

  Remy had just run himself through the shower, and he came out of the bathroom to find Jon sitting on the corner of one of the beds, staring at the room’s green carpet with laser-beam intensity.

  “You all right?” Remy asked, drying his dark hair with a towel.

  It took a moment or so, and he was about to a
sk the question again when Jon pulled his eyes away from the rug.

  “I’m good,” he said, but Remy wasn’t sure he believed him. The man was pale, sick-looking, and he hoped that it was just the reality of their situation catching up with him.

  “Are you done in there?” Jon asked, rousing himself.

  “It’s all yours.” Remy stepped aside as Jon grabbed a plastic bag containing his purchases and disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him; seconds later the water in the shower was running.

  Remy had bought a new pair of jeans and a powder blue dress shirt. He tore the price tags off and dressed, glancing toward the bathroom, wishing he were alone on this leg of the journey. Something told him that things were only going to get worse, and Jon had already been through enough.

  From another bag on the floor, Remy took out the maps he’d bought and unfolded them on the bed, planning the quickest route to Louisiana and hoping the van would last long enough to get them there.

  Steam swirled around the bathroom as Jon held on to the edges of the sink, staring at his fogging reflection in the mirror.

  But it wasn’t himself he was looking at; it wasn’t a person at all. Jon was seeing a place . . . a place not seen by man or woman for a very long time.

  Eden was coming.

  He was both in awe of and terrified by the immensity of the place, the wildness of its smell. It was closer now than it had ever been, and soon it would be here.

  If only Nathan could have lived to see it.

  But it was his sacrifice that had allowed Jon to connect to the special place in a way that his people never had before.

  It was as if he were actually there, walking amid the lush, tropical green, feeling the moisture of the humidity upon his naked skin.

  The pain was sudden, like stepping on shards of glass with bare feet.