Jump: The Fallen: Testament 1 (26 page)

“For Heaven’s sake. . . . Please, it’s still a. . .”

I can tell he has to think about it for a few seconds. Despite his whole life, there’s a hole right through his faith, as big as the hole in the roof of his church. Authoring the book that will end all humanity, bluffing his way into Purgatory, not to mention his shattered beliefs. . . I’m guessing it’s getting tougher and tougher to keep up the charade.

I ignore him, because for me it’s about seeing the look on someone’s face when I do something you aren’t supposed to . . . cram it in authority’s ass . . . and break it the fuck off. “Well . . .
Father
. . . a whorehouse is a place you pay for pussy because you know you’re gonna get it. . .”

“Mother of Mercy, you are just . . . unredeemable.”

“. . .and a titty-bar is a place you pay for pussy, knowing you’re not.”

I can tell he kinda wants to laugh, but he just can’t allow himself to. So he makes the sign of the cross over his chest, kisses his thumb or some other cult shit, and then he looks up at the statue of crucified Jesus behind the pulpit. “Forgive him.” Old habits. . . Then he turns back to me with a look of disgust on his face. “And your point?”

He knows the point, but he’s doing the same thing I am—shooting the shit, passing the time, trying to keep his mind off the fact that I’m gonna kill everyone on the planet tomorrow. One thing’s for sure, neither one of us wants to sleep.

“No point. Just”—I look around the church, for effect—“once you get inside and see all that glory . . . tough to remember which one you’re at.”

A couple hours and too many jokes in poor taste later, and we are deep in the calm before the storm. We alternate trading barbs and sleep-jerking for about an hour, before I finally let the father nod off a few times. And when he does, I can smell that he is holding something back. Some little shred of insanity that he just won’t let go of.

 
I catch myself sleep-jerking a few times, too. And in between my visions of the Dark Angel and the Queen of Hearts, entering the exit tunnel together, I hear the father whimper out, “I won’t let you do it again.”

So I wake him all the way up with a little jab from my wing. Still don’t know my own strength, though, because I poke him a little too hard and send him flying into the aisle, flopping and flailing like a fallen angel. “Wha—what? Who did. . .?”

“That’s the question,” I say, “isn't it?”

I watch him drag his confusion back onto its place on the pew and his mind back to its new understanding of reality.

“
What
aren’t you going to let
who
do?” I ask. “You better spit out the last piece of it, or tomorrow—just as easy to spark up the fire with you.”

“I don’t know—”

“Oh, you know, all right,” I say. And I sniff in deeply and I can smell the piss of fear, but the burning pepper of frustration and anger, too. “You’re just not telling. So cough it up, or I’ll choke it out of you.”

By now, he knows my temper can go either way. And whether it’s that knowledge or the fact that a guy can only carry so much guilt all by himself, he starts spilling his guts. Once he does . . . it’s the first time that I would have rather remained blissfully ignorant of just how badly power can fuck things up. Because whatever blasphemy he’s been boiling up in his book so far, this shit is worse. I’m surprised he’s not bursting into flames right in front of me.

When he finally spins down his story—I can handle the first part, but the second. . .? I say, “You’ve got to be kidding?”

“If only I. . .” he says. And he pulls out his flask.

At this point, I’m not busting his balls over the booze, because after this new shit, I might need a swig or six myself.

“I wish I were.” And then he takes a long pull, trembling a little again.

“No wonder you’re sucking on that thing like a tit,” I say. “That’s just—you’re burning with me for those, father.”

“I didn’t write it that way,” he says. “It’s just what happened—that’s their interpretation of it. But when I saw them running from the arena, and then when I got to Fury, I could . . . feel it. Like a vision or a smell. It was simply there, all around me. The truth . . . and what they were going to do.”

It takes a couple of minutes of silence for this new poison to infect its way into my understanding of reality. It’s hard to swallow, even for me. “Just what did you
think
‘loins’ meant, anyway?” I ask.

“It’s figurative,” he says. “I never meant for it—”

“Tell that to Matthew and John and whoever,” I say. “Jesus, why can’t anyone just write a book that makes sense?” And before I know it, I’ve found a subject in my head that I can rant all day about. This will surely keep us awake. “That’s the same thing those idiots did with the old Constitution. ‘A well regulated militia. . .’ It’s the goddamn
people’s
right. They
were
the militia. And now everyone wants to interpret the living shit out of it. Why can’t someone just say, ‘Keep your ignorant, uneducated hands off my guns and I’ll let you spout all the stupid shit you want to on the news.’ Because I gotta tell ya, they killed more motherfuckers with the First Amendment than anyone had guns to keep up.”

And I can tell I’ve lost him, because that’s what happens. In fact, that’s what
did
happen. The PIN spewed and spouted so hard and long at the public, and the citizens spit so hard back, that I think everyone in the middle just finally tuned out. And once the big fat middle class stops giving a shit, everyone’s fucked.

And that’s what happens to me. “Ah, fuck ’em, Father.”

“Huh—wha. . .?” he blurts, before he nods off again. And he’s fallen asleep.

And what did I just say? I nudge him awake. “Ya see?” I mutter at him.

“See what?” he says.

“Doesn’t matter
now
, does it?”

“I guess you’re right,” he says. “I still can’t believe that—”

“Yeah,” I say, “and I can’t believe a priest—”

“Jacob. . .”

Disbelief—the whole reason no one lifts a trigger-finger until it’s too late. But despite all this shitty news—old and new—I feel worse for him than me. Poor miserable son of a bitch had to fight his way all the way into Purgatory to find the truth of the Word that he’s been waiting for, and when he gets it—it’s lost love and false faith—more bad news.

But which part is the worst? That God and the Devil are in the whole thing together? That they’ve run this charade over and over again, back and forth since eternity? Or is it that I’m their bastard love child?

I know my vote. “Misinterpreting motherfuckers,” I say. “We should kill them all.”

When I say it, we both look up at the cross behind the pulpit—Jesus splayed out in sacrifice. We gnaw and think and grind the gears in our ever-dizzying heads for . . . minutes, at least. Both of us hoping we are dreaming and neither of us wanting to say anything that will wake us up so it has to be real.

Once I wrap my wings around it, I’m back to flaming pissed. “You sure there’s only one way to get back up there?” I ask.

“Pretty sure,” he says, “but . . . what do I know?” He’s staring into himself now. “I’m a priest of the Word, enforcing the laws of despots.”

I look at him and he’s still zoning out. I frown at him, but he doesn’t notice. “Well, that’s pretty clear,” I say. “Only question is, what are ya willing to do about it? Because I’ll tell you what”—I look back up at the cross—“I’m not going out like him.”

“Huh?” Now he’s snapping out of it.

“Look what they did to him,” I say. “Fucked him up just for trying. That is
not
me.”

Now I go off into my own mind, because I’ve had enough of the authority, and the torture, and the manipulation by the powerful. In this world or the next . . . or, if the father is right, the next one after that.

“I understand,” he says, “but that is not what they want.”

And I know what they do want. “They want an ocean of blood and sacrifice for their little reincarnation arena?” I say to him. “I’ll drown them in it.”

It’s a bold statement, but one that by now we both know I’m capable of. One thing they might not know up in Heaven—you go keeping a pit bull around as a pet, it’s only a matter of time before he gets pissed off and mauls you.

The father talks to me for a while after that, but I’m off in a conspiracy rant in my head.

Once I snap out of it, the first sentence I can comprehend is, “You have until the end of the seventh day.”

“And we’re on the sixth,” I say. “I got that. Cute, he—” Shit, now he’s got me doing it. “
She
builds it in seven and that’s how long I have to knock it down.”

But there’s still something on him. A little tidbit I can taste.

Then the father gives me the death blow. “Once we are all gone. . . If and when we come back. . . Nothing changes after that, no one will remember their past life, and we will all just do this over as someone or something else. With both of them as our masters . . . again.”

“Oh, now goddammit,” I say. “What kind of Hindu cow-shit is that? You don’t. . . Catholics don’t believe in that reincarnation crap.”

He cocks his head at me, looks me in the eyes, and raises his eyebrows. Then he points to the cross—crucified Jesus behind the pulpit. “He did.”

FURY

— XLVII —

WHATEVER DNA LIFE and that devil, Dal, gave me from their unholy “loins,” the father says I have a seriously overdeveloped sense of revenge and vengeance. Because when I finally figure out what I’m gonna do about all this, he thinks it’s pretty rotten, even for me. But if I had to put it in my own words . . . I’m just a sore loser.

Whatever it is, I make him spend the rest of the night rewriting what’s left of the “shalls” in his book—all the stuff that hasn’t “come to pass,” as he puts it. And I pass the time re-familiarizing myself with the other book—their
Bible
. Because if there’s one thing that is constant throughout the world, the universe, and eternity, it’s that the people who write the rules . . . never fucking follow them.

It’s still pretty dark out when the father and I wake them all up. And they squawk and caw in protest as they pull themselves out of whatever cozy feelings they could claw from their dreams.

Kelly—sorry, “Salvation”—looks a whole lot better after a night of rest and, for better or worse for me, she’s downright chipper. We’ll see how she is after I give her the glorious news.

And Fury is Fury. “Fuck,” she says, “can’t we just sleep? You’re such an asshole.” Then she stretches her wings out to full width.

I didn’t notice it before, but the little angel’s gray spiked span is wider than mine. That’ll either make her fast as hell or give her more feathers to fire. Whatever the wings do, it’s sure to be useful today.

She flaps and flutters her way back into the beams above the pews. Then she hops around a little until she finds a perch she likes.

When Fury finally roosts, I look up at her and frown. “Are you done, Paris?”

“What?” she says. “I like it up here. Go fuck yourself.”

The perching thing is probably left over from living in the loft above her parents’ penthouse, but her last statement reminds me that it’s been a while. And I instinctively look at Salvation.
Not the right time
, I think. Though, it’s always the right time, isn’t it? And I stick a little pinfeather in the idea—tuck that little prick away for after. If there is an after.

When Rain wakes up, her flicker turns back to blasting bright white light throughout the entire church. And we all recoil and caw and squint and look away from the wood timbers she’s perched on. I’m sure from the outside that the hole in the roof looks like a spotlight to Heaven. Or a super-duper shopping beacon at midnight on Dark Friday, beckoning the blasphemers to mow through more plastic from Chinasia. And I smile. I’ll need that judgmental, ranting anger later . . . today, of all days.

“I’m sorry,” Rain says. “I can’t help it.”

And from her it’s all honesty. The girl doesn’t know anything else. She is sorry, and I’m sure she would turn it off if she could.

Fury puts a wing over her face. “Like I fucking said—sunglasses!”

“Quit your bitching,” I say. And then I show them all the little gifts I got to commemorate the dawn of a new day. Sounds too poetic for me, but it’s kinda sarcastic, too, so I like it. Decadent, like opening your gifts before Christday. Or the twelve days of Hanukkah, or whatever shit the mindless crack credits to celebrate.

And, yes, I realize they are bad thoughts, and they are blasphemous, and they make me damn near unlovable, but trust me, it won’t be the worst thing I do today . . . them either.

“I slipped out after the father fell asleep on his book, and I—”

“Where did you get sunglasses?” Salvation asks me.

And in the grand scheme, it doesn’t seem all that big a deal to me, but I know what she’s asking. “Uh. . .” I say, readying for the ass-whooping. “Ten talon tribute?” And I cluck out a little chuckle before I have to cover my mouth.

Salvation just looks at me in disgust. I remember that one, all too well. “You didn’t. . .”

“Oh, please,” says Fury. “He jacked them. Gimme mine. She’s killing my eyes.”

And before I let the trouble train leave the station—because today we just need to get to it—I throw up a pair of deep gray, dark-black-mirrored sunglasses, complete with adjustable neoprene strap. Fury snatches them in midair and inspects them with a caw of approval. And she puts them on, adjusts the strap, and looks right at Rain, testing them.

They must pass, because she says, “Suh-weet.” And Fury is smiling and bobbing her head and she caws. “You look
good
, girlfriend,” she says to Rain. And just when I think she and I might be able to come to some sort of middle ground, she looks back down at me through her new sunglasses and says, “You—still a fucking asshole.”

Whatever sunglasses do for the appearance of a human, on a dark gray, onyx-shining, anger-filled angel. . . Fury looks scary as shit. Her eye sockets look like the Queen of Hearts’ big black orbs. And today, little Fury is gonna be fine.

I give Salvation hers—deep gray with a bright red logo. Then the father gets a pair—black with white, of course. And finally I toss a pair up to Rain and put my own blood-red ones on.