Escaping Heaven (39 page)

             
“You do, don’t you? And you just gave it away by telling me that, so you can’t back out of it.”

             
James shrugged his shoulders with a smile. “See what I mean? I’m putting my faith in you, because my heart’s telling me it’s the right thing to do, and I should’ve started listening to my heart again a long time ago. You’re one hundred percent crazy, Jake Altford, but you’re also the best shot any of us have at remembering what it’s like to be happy.” He paused for a moment, watching Jake’s face as he mulled it over. It was a lot to take in, and Jake was clearly running through all the options in his head, all the possible outcomes, what could go right and wrong before he closed his eyes, inhaled a deep breath then let it out once more, the look of a decision on his face. “So what do you say?”

             
Jake shoved the hilt of the sword into his belt and moved over towards James, holding out a hand. “You’re on.”

             
James laughed warmly, grabbing Jake’s hand in a handshake as the man helped the angel to his feet again. “Oh thank God. I had absolutely no idea what we were going to do if you said no.”

             
“Thankfully it didn’t come to that. Now all we have to do is figure out how to get Heaven to stop chasing me and leave us all alone,” Jake said, rubbing his eyes with one hand wearily. “And as far as I can tell, that’s pretty much impossible.”

             
James patted him on the back as the two started to walk into the cave. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Maybe we can even help. Why’d you come back here anyway? I found the clothes you’d stashed in the cave, and I wasn’t sure you’d double back, but figured it was my only shot at finding you.”

             
He reached over his head and grabbed onto the halo. His fingers closed firmly around it and he pulled. The halo resisted slightly but then reluctantly gave way, sliding off of his head as Jake held it before him. “Well, I needed to get rid of this, but I figured I might need it again later, so I wanted to put it here with my clothes. I figured they might have been tracking me with it.”

             
James shook his head. “I don’t think it works like that, but you never can be too sure, I guess.”

             
The two men stowed Jake’s halo with the bundle of clothes, and then hid it beneath a handful of leaves and rocks, at James’ suggestion.

             
“We should probably go and get your two friends then,” Jake said. “We’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning.”

             
James turned to look at him with a sense of surprise. “A meeting? With who?”

             
Jake laughed softly. “My man on the inside.”

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M
ax and his team were more than a little ticked off. This Altford guy had made a fool of them, and they were going to make him pay for it, even if it was the last thing they did. The blonde Tagger had had plenty of time to stew in his anger and he was itching to take it out on someone or something.

             
While he’d been waiting for his team to rematerialize, he and the rest of his crew had been taking flak from all the other Taggers around the reformation cell. None of them could ever recall a Tagger reforming inside of the cell, and certainly not more than one at once. They endured the jeers and taunts and tried to stay focused. Two hours later, the seven of them were walking back down to the lockup to get what they needed for another compass.

             
“Did you see his face?” Yael asked Maria, who’d been the first Tagger Jake had cleaved with his sword.

             
“No,” she replied, her voice thick with an Italian accent. “It was too fast.”

             
“There is no way this man could be who they claim he is,” Polydorous said. “He had a sword of his
own
. And he shifted into the solid plane without so much as batting an eyelash.” The seven had been discussing the encounter on the way down to lockup, and none of them were pleased with their performance or the intel they’d been given on the guy.

             
“And a halo,” Max agreed. “And none of us got a good look at his face. Either this guy is the luckiest S.O.B. ever, or there’s something they aren’t telling us about him. How the Hell would he have gotten a sword and a halo? Did they send another team after him before and he took one of their swords and one of their halos?”

             
Yael shook her head as they turned the corner into another seemingly identical white hallway. “Not possible. It is possible he acquired a sword from some other Tagger, but the halos can’t be taken away from you. You can give yours to someone else and then it becomes theirs, but if someone tries to take yours from you, it will very shortly disappear from them and return to you.”

             
“So someone gave this guy a halo?” Max asked her. “How does that happen?”

             
She sighed softly. “The only thing I can think of is that may he stumbled into a storeroom where they keep unassigned Tagger gear and stole a halo that wasn’t keyed yet. He could’ve gotten a sword at the same time.”

             
“I believe how he got them is irrelevant to our discussion,” Nhlalha said. “What is important is that it will make him much easier to recognize on Earth. There are several loose souls wandering around, but none of them have a halo or a flaming sword.”

             
Max nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Right, unless he ditches them, which he might. We can’t underestimate this guy. Can. NOT. We sold him short ourselves, even when we were specifically told not to.”

             
“C’mon Max,” Polydorous interjected, “how were we supposed to know the guy had a sword?”

             
“Moving forward,” Yael said, “I think we should assume he’s got the full legions of Hades behind him. That way if he doesn’t, we can be pleasantly surprised. Because at this point, I would not put it past him.”

             
“Are we sure he isn’t Lucifer?” Polydorous asked.

             
“I certainly hope not,” Max sighed. “But let’s not go betting on these kinds of things.”

             
The Taggers walked past Bolormaa, who was still engrossed in her manuscript. She glanced up as they were approaching, saw that Nhlanhla was with them and then looked back down. They were cleared to go in and she had much better things to be doing, like making her way through the fantastic story on the pages in her hands.

             
They walked into the lockup and down towards the place where Jake’s box was stored, being led by Nhlanhla. When they reached Jake’s box, he climbed up and pulled it from the shelf, a worried expression crossing his face. “This feels a lot lighter than it used to be,” he said, tossing it down to Max.

             
Max lifted the lid off the top and shouted. “Dammit!” he shouted. “His clothes are gone!”

             
Yael pulled another box out at random, lifting the top off, finding it empty as well. “So’s this one.” Then another. “And this one.”

             
“Altford,” Maria snarled.

             
Max growled, looking around at the boxes, then caught the upturned box lid from Jake’s box, seeing the small box attached to it marked “TAGGER SAMPLE” and he chuckled. “No, I don’t think so. This would’ve taken way too much time for him, and there’s no way he would’ve taken clothes from a bunch of other people. And anyway, it doesn’t matter…” He crouched down and popped open the inner box, taking out the two-inch scrap of cloth. “We still have our sample.” He fished out his sword and shaved off a small corner the size of his thumbnail, putting the rest of the sample back inside the box in the lid, then placed the lid on the box. He shoved the box into the first open space he could find, tucking his clipping into his pocket with his sword, before moving back out the way they came.

             
When they got to the guard station, Yael stopped and snapped her fingers at Bolormaa, who looked up from her manuscript with a scowl. “Yes?”

             
“What happened to the clothes in lock up?”

             
She shrugged. “One of the angels probably came and took them for one of the sections with souls of fashion designers to work with. They know not to touch the Tagger samples from the boxtops, so we let them take whatever they want generally. Why, there some kind of problem?”

             
Yael scowled for a moment, then shook her head as she moved to rejoin the rest of the group, heading back towards their barracks.

             
“Don’t worry,” Max said. “In eight hours, we’ll have another compass or two live and ready to help us track him down. And when the Captain hears about this… Hell, he might just get every available Tagger he can to bring this guy down. And I’d like to see this Altford guy stop that.”

*
             
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B
ob had found Jake’s message about two hours after Jake had left it, having gone to leave Jake a message himself. He somehow figured Jake was going to like the surprise Bob had cooked up for him, and he had several hours to kill, so he did a few more pick ups, just to make sure he wasn’t standing out from the other Cherubim too much.

             
He liked how it made him feel, living a double life. Bob had been suffering from a lack of excitement over the last few decades, and this was exactly the kind of thing he’d wanted more of in his life. Adventure and excitement. He went about his deliveries without paying too much attention to the actual souls he was ferrying up, but that didn’t mean Bob wasn’t doing the best job he could – he just knew it well enough to do it all on autopilot.

             
When 8 a.m. rolled around on the West Coast, Bob appeared near the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge and started walking slowly across it, the backpack slung over his shoulder. As he got part way across the bridge, he could see a handful of Celestial forms, mostly talking to one another, and Bob’s eyebrow arched nervously.

             
One of the forms turned and started walking towards him, and the others turned to move behind him. Bob fought a fight-or-flight response for a few seconds until he saw Jake at the forefront of them and then let out a slight sigh of relief, only to gasp again the minute he saw Shelly, Randall and James walking behind Jake.

             
Bob’s mind was frantic, trying desperately to explain the situation in his mind, but he couldn’t come up with any possible reason why the three people who had left Heaven to get him would not have dragged him back right from the start.

             
Then he saw that Jake was smiling.

             
“Hey Bob,” Jake said, with a grin. “How’s it going?”

             
“Uh, kid?” Bob asked.

             
“You!” Randall said, stunned. “You’re helping him?”

             
“Wait,” Bob replied, waving his hand. “You don’t mean?”

             
Jake laughed. “Okay gang, welcome to the resistance. It seems like you all know one another. Now let’s go get some coffee.”

             
The five of them walked down a ways and stopped at nice little coffee shop not far from the bridge. No one said much of anything during the walk, as it seemed like everyone was waiting for Jake to fill them in on what was going on.

             
It was a Thursday morning, so the commuters were starting to come out, and cyclists were whipping along the streets of San Francisco. The city was busy, but not so busy that they couldn’t find a nice table out on the sidewalk to sit and enjoy their coffee. Jake and the three angels had been tangible and wearing civilian clothes when Bob had shown up, but Bob decided to enjoy his coffee in his toga and tunic. San Francisco, he figured. He didn’t stand out all that much, comparatively. And no one so much as said a word about it.

             
Jake was the first one to speak. “So why don’t you tell me how you guys know Bob, James?” he said, picking up his Irish coffee.

             
“We went to ask him how to find you, right when we started our search to look for you. He sent us off to Gilbert, the guy who you suggested get some new magazines,” James said. “He’s still talking about that, by the way, so apparently you did him a huge favor.”

             
Jake paused for a second then smiled. “D’y’know, I had forgotten all about that.”