Jade Sky (32 page)

He sat through the service, the chanting and bells and robes and songs, neither kneeling nor standing nor going up for the bread and wine. The words washed over him, and the looks he got when he didn't respond weren't any worse than the looks he got just being there. When it finished, he waited for the precession to go by: cross, incense, giant Bible, other guy, another other guy, two altar boys, priest. He followed them out, hobbling at full speed to the wide-eyed entertainment and bemusement of the masses.

They stopped outside, the altar boy and rectors breaking to the left, Father Rees stopping to say goodbye as people exited the church. Rees took his hand when he offered it, and Matt admired how well he hid his distaste.

"Good morning, sir," the priest said. "Thank you for coming today."

Matt laughed, a haggard, unpleasant sound from a raw throat. He squeezed harder when Rees tried to pull his hand away, and despite his injuries and lack of augs, Matt remained the stronger man.

He enjoyed the pain in Jason's eyes, and smiled. "Don't you know me, Father?"

The shock of recognition jolted Rees's whole body. "Rowley. I didn't recognize you." His face tightened into a guarded, threatened mask. He tried to step back and Matt didn't let him. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave or I'm calling the cops."

Matt's smile widened. "You did that once already, only it wasn't the cops. You won't survive a second time, so let's cut the threats."

All premise, all kindness, all Christian charity dropped from his face. "What do you want?"

Matt let go, pulled out his wallet, and produced a photo. Monica sat with their son, Adam, against a cloth backdrop. Three weeks old, you couldn't escape the family resemblance: he had Monica's cheeks and nose, and Matt’s eyes. "This is my son, Adam."

Jason cleared his throat. "He's beautiful."

"I almost didn't live to meet him."

Matt punched him in the stomach, and Rees folded, gasping. They knelt together, and Matt ignored the wide eyes of the parishioners who'd stopped to stare. Somebody said something about calling the police, and Jason waved them down.

Standing on the steps of an alien church in a town not his own, Matt leaned in close and whispered the only things he knew for certain were true. "You set me up. You forced me to kill good men who were just doing their job. They died for your vengeance, and there is no forgiveness for it. So God help me, if I ever see you again, or if she ever sees you again, or our boy sees you even once, I'm going to kill you and leave your body to rot in a ditch."

Jason nodded once, gasped, and Matt helped him to his feet.

"You have a nice life, padre." Matt hobbled down the steps on his cane, got into the car, and drove south.

*   *   *

Matt walked up the stairs to his home with the help of the railing and cursed the creaky third step that he still hadn't fixed. It went back on the list, higher this time. He opened the door to the smell of honey and a diaper that needed changing. Monica met him halfway to the kitchen, a honey cake in one hand, Adam in the other.

He mussed Adam's hair, kissed his wife, and stole the honey cake. She opened her mouth in an "O" of indignant shock as he shoved it whole into his mouth and chewed.

"You, good sir, have no manners."

He chewed a bit more, swallowed, and grinned. "I've been told that before. Good thing I'm so pretty."

She grabbed him with her free hand, pulled him in for a long kiss, then hugged him tight. "Ain't neither of us are perfect, but you're all mine."

"Yeah," Matt said. "I'm yours."

*   *   *

Two weeks later, just before seven am, his phone rang. He rolled out of Monica's embrace, held it up, and squinted at the screen. The caller ID read, "Sakura, Isuji."

He hit "talk" before the second ring could wake the baby. "Hello?" He shuffled to the bathroom, and a jolt of pain in his left knee told him that leaving his cane by the bedside might have been a mistake.

"Sergeant Rowley, ICAP has intelligence you may be interested in."

Matt licked his lips. "I thought ICAP was defunct." Their future funding had been rolled into pensions for former augs, since two-thirds of the upper management had died on the same day, augs had stopped working, and Jade no longer held any narcotic or addictive properties.

"Government agencies never go away." As she talked he looked at himself in the mirror. His hair had started to grow back, his scars were fading, and new muscle rippled under his robe. "I thought being an American you would understand this. Do you want to hear or not?" He flexed, and his chest bulged, lean and massive despite a lack of exercise. Maybe even bigger than when he'd gone to bed.

He hid his worry behind a chuckle. "Sure, Blossom. What's the news?"

"A creature has been spotted outside Damascus, nine feet tall with wings of silver feathers. It claims to be a god and has enslaved several villages so far. Calls itself Arakiel."

"Wow." He couldn't think of a more coherent reply. Arakiel, the second fallen angel mentioned in the Book of Enoch.

"Cults to it have sprung up in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Al Qassim, Riyadh, Ma'an. There are twenty-seven aggregate reports so far."

"Shit, Blossom, what are we supposed to do about it?"

Until that moment, he never knew a shrug could be audible. "I don't know. But we're the worldwide experts on egregoroi now, and you're ordered to report to work at oh-nine-hundred. As a consultant."

"What if I don't want the job?"

"They've been authorized to detain you until you cooperate. See you in two hours."

He opened his mouth to protest the timeline, then heard the throaty chop of an Apache AH-64's rotors approach over the treeline. "Okay, I'll see you then."

He hung up the phone and limped back to the bed. Monica raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

He kissed her cheek. "Hey, baby. I got to go to work."

The End