Tartarus: Kingdom Wars II (18 page)

I compared what I had just watched on video with the live scene. No other house on the block had been damaged. Just the professor’s.

“I barely knew the guy who lived there,” Jeff said. “Saw him coming and going mostly. He was a cripple. Had one of those ramps up to the porch. Tell you one thing, though, he musta done something bad to tick God off like that. You saw it. It’s like the finger of the Almighty reached down and, boom! Sayonara, Charlie. My wife says she doesn’t think anyone deserved what he got. Me? I think God drilled him on account of he was shackin’ up with this Oriental babe.”

Just as my knuckles were about to make an impression on Jeff the cameraman’s face, a scream startled us all.

Sue Ling had managed two steps from her car before collapsing, her face contorted in horror. A bag of groceries lay on its side, breakfast cereal, deodorant, a stalk of celery, and a bag of jelly beans spilling onto the street.

Two police officers reached her before we did. Jana pushed them aside and held her friend in her arms. I made a couple of futile gestures, including righting the grocery bag and replacing the items.

On the verge of hysteria, Sue Ling moaned that she never should have left him. Nothing we said consoled her.

I felt helpless. Relieved. Hurt. Angry. But mostly helpless.

The rage would come later.

I stayed with Sue Ling at Jana’s house until Jana got off work. We didn’t want her to be alone.

Mostly she sat and stared into space as I answered her questions with what little information I had. I told her about Jana’s call, arriving at the scene, and the video clip. The police called it a freak accident. Sue Ling and I knew better.

“He was working on Abdiel’s narration when I left,” she told me. “His computer—”

“Destroyed,” I said.

“The hard drive, do you think—”

“It was smashed up pretty good.”

That was an understatement. Everything had been obliterated. Totally and completely obliterated. Not a piece of furniture, not a book, not a sheet of paper had been left intact.

After the police had finished with the scene they had let me sift through the rubble. With nothing to identify I did fine until I lifted a piece of what looked like part of a desk and found a twisted wheelchair wheel beneath it.

“What about backups?” I asked her.

“He had a backup of Abdiel’s narration on a memory stick. He kept it in his pocket. He was going to make a copy for you when he was done.”

“How far along was it?”

Fresh tears fell. “They had just finished it as I was leaving for the store.”

I offered to have supper delivered. Sue went into Jana’s bedroom and lay down instead. I checked on her after a few minutes and she was asleep.

Just as well. I wouldn’t have watched the news had Sue Ling been awake. The destruction of the house on Landis Street was the top story. The male anchor handed it over to the reporter at the scene.

Jana’s face filled the screen.

“In what the insurance company is calling an Act of God, a single-family dwelling on Landis Street was leveled by a powerful tornado that touched down briefly in North Park. Inexplicably, no other house was damaged.”

She told me later she fought to keep the phrase Act of God out of the report. Her producer insisted on it.

Neighbor Jeff’s video clip played.

“The owner of the house, Professor John Patrick Forsythe, was the only person in the dwelling at the time. He did not survive.”

Jana interviewed the first officer on the scene and went on to tell of the professor’s connection to Heritage College. Her words barely registered. I was screaming into a sofa pillow.

I left Sue with Jana and drove to La Jolla Shores. The thought of going home was too suffocating. My condo was too small to hold my rage.

It was midnight. I kicked off my shoes and walked barefoot on the wet sand. A full moon painted the beach with silvery brushstrokes. White waves crashed and slid up the sloping shoreline, splashing my feet with bubbly foam.

The sea has always had a calming effect on me. Here I can walk and meditate and relax. But it had no calming effect on me tonight. The rage that churned within me was deeper than the deep blue sea.

I screamed at the stars. “Abdiel! Abdiel, show yourself! Abdiel!”

A half hour of this and I barely had a voice left. I searched futilely for a dimensional membrane. No matter how much it hurt, if I found one I was going to pop into Abdiel’s bedroom uninvited, as he was so fond of popping into mine.

“Abdiel!” I yelled.

Each unanswered cry only made me angrier until I was a madman. Ranting. Kicking the surf. Throwing punches at the heavens. But so far all I’d succeeded in doing was scaring away two couples who had come to sit under the stars and neck.

“You are distraught.”

I recognized the voice. My hair disheveled, my eyes charged, I swung around in fury. “Where have you been?”

“I have walked every step with you,” Abdiel replied. “Had your anger not blinded you, you would have seen me.”

The stretch of beach behind him showed only one set of footprints.

“You just let me scream myself hoarse?”

“Is that the question you really want to ask me?”

He was right. Insufferable, but right. I pointed an accusatory finger at him, my hand shaking with intensity, but the words weren’t coming. My mind was crammed with questions, threats, and accusations. They log-jammed in my throat.

“You want to know where I was when the professor was attacked,” Abdiel said for me.

“For starters.”

“I was watching.”

“Watching! Watching? You were watching?”

“You heard me correctly.”

“What…how—you were
watching
?”

“I was not alone.”

In my mind I saw an arena of angels entertaining themselves with the professor’s death. What really ignited me was that I knew what it was like to be the man in the middle. I had once been in a battle for my life, surrounded by heavenly spectators.

“You watched and did nothing?” This was unbelievable. Beyond my comprehension. “Are you a sadist? I thought you were his friend. Why didn’t you rescue him?”

“We are pleased to serve the Father,” Abdiel said.

“That’s it? That’s your explanation? Or is it your excuse? Do you know what I think? I think you were afraid. For all your self-righteous, holier-than-thou snobbery, I think you’re just using God as an excuse to hide your cowardice!”

Abdiel’s chest heaved. His eyes blazed. His sword appeared and burst into flame, knocking me off my feet. I sailed through the air and landed on my backside in the sand.

I’d never felt a hit like it before. It wasn’t like a punch to the chin or gut. The blow passed completely through me. It didn’t knock the wind out of me, but it certainly knocked some of the fight out of me.

On my back I stared up at a glowing, levitating, angry angel.

“Any further questions, Grant Austin?”

“Yeah. Did he suffer?”

I scored a blow of my own. Abdiel’s shoulders fell. His glow wasn’t nearly as fierce.

“I have witnessed the deaths of hundreds of Christian martyrs. I have seen no finer example of faith. The professor remained steadfast. Unyielding.”

I envisioned the professor’s final moments. The wheelchair warrior.

“Regardless of what you think, Grant Austin, it never gets easier for us. The valiant death of a believer reminds us of the darkest day, when heaven was helpless.”

I shook my head. “I still don’t understand how you can just stand by and watch someone be murdered.”

“It pleases us—”

“Yeah, I know—to serve the Father. But if you ask me, the battle plan stinks. How can you expect to enlist human support for the cause if you abandon them when they’re attacked?”

“You labor under a misconception,” Abdiel said. “One that the professor did not share.”

“And what misconception is that? That human lives are as valuable to God as angels?”

Abdiel’s anger flared. I flinched.

“Do not speak blasphemy, Grant Austin. Even in pain. I will not tolerate it. You cannot begin to fathom the depths of the Father’s love for you.”

I knew I’d gone too far and wasn’t proud of it. In my attempt to defend the professor I was dishonoring him.

“The misconception,” Abdiel said with forced restraint, “is that death is the end of life. It was my honor to escort the professor through death’s door to a higher realm of existence. I wish you could see him. He is healed. He is with his wife and daughters. He is happy. And he is most eager to continue the fight against Lucifer.”

The angel’s words shamed me. What kind of friend was I to wish the professor continued pain and sorrow in this life for my sake?

“He has fought the good fight,” I muttered.

“Indeed.”

“You said there were others with you. Who?”

“You will see them. They will be at the professor’s funeral.”

My backside was getting cold. I could feel the water soaking through my pants. “Can I get up now?”

Abdiel made no attempt to stop me, so I climbed to my feet and tried to brush wet sand from my hands and clothes, which is always a futile effort. My anger had not ceased. It had merely been redirected.

“Who did this to the professor?” I asked. “And why?”

“While I cannot say with certainty, it is safe to assume the order came from Lucifer.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“We are not omniscient.”

“But God is.”

“The Father is not in the habit of informing us what another is thinking.”

“But you’re on His side. I thought it was different with angels.”

“You are on His side as well. In some ways our walk is no different from yours. We, too, face challenges. We, too, must choose how we will respond.”

“But you said you were there. You saw who killed the professor.”

“Correct,” Abdiel said.

“Who? Not Belial.”

My comment intrigued Abdiel. “Why would you dismiss Belial? He is your enemy.”

After meeting him, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that Belial had anything to do with the professor’s death, but this wasn’t the time to get into it with Abdiel.

“Just tell me who did it,” I said.

“If I tell you, what will you do?”

“Like you, I’ll face the challenge and choose how to respond.”

My answer pleased him. “He is indeed our common enemy,” Abdiel said.

That’s all I needed to hear.

“Semyaza!” I muttered.

But there was no choice to make. Now that I knew, a single path lay before me.

Revenge.

Had we ordered a day for the funeral, we couldn’t have selected a better one. The sky was a brilliant, blue-vaulted dome. A sweet ocean air blew off the Pacific, softly rustling the leaves of the trees. Patches of flowers splashed color here and there—ruby red, sun yellow, pure white.

Greenwood Mortuary is a patch of green paradise in an asphalt city. Grassy hills stretch luxuriously across the terrain. Shaded alcoves provide protection from the sun on warm days. Even the chapel hints of a more peaceful age with its stone walls, stained-glass windows, and waterfall gardens.

The small turnout surprised me until I thought of the number of funerals I had attended for college professors. You hear about their deaths. You remember fondly the influence they’ve had on your life. You might even send a card. But they’re a part of the past and you’ve moved on, and nostalgia isn’t a high priority in a hyperactive world.

The media were there, taping a follow-up to one of the more bizarre stories in San Diego’s weather history. That’s what the incident had become for the media. A freak weather story. Only a few of us knew that it was a surgical strike in a vicious cosmic war that threatened every man, woman, and child.

Dr. Marvin Whitson, president of the college, performed the service. He gave the professor a good send-off, balancing his academic achievements with testaments to his character. There were no brothers or sisters to mention. The professor’s parents had both died when he was young. His wife and daughter had been his only family.

Sue Ling attended in the role of grieving widow. I don’t know what else to call her. She loved the professor as deeply as any woman has loved a husband.

Jana stood to one side of her, wearing a broad-rimmed black hat and veil. She attended as a friend, not a news reporter. I stood on Sue’s other side.

Abdiel attended in human form, his broad shoulders and thick neck barely contained by a suit and tie. His appearance as a human was a gesture of respect to the professor, one that Sue and Jana and I appreciated.

As Dr. Whitson said a final prayer, Sue took my arm. She whispered, “How many?”

“Thousands,” I said.

And there were. A short distance above us thousands upon thousands of angels circled the professor’s casket, their heads bowed in honor of a fallen warrior.