The Sword of Michael - eARC (20 page)

She arched her back. “Yes. I am.”

“Oh here we go,” Burt said. Oversized raven, hopping forward, and a distinct Brooklynese to his voice.

“Hey hey, heya, heya…” came a soft baritone.

“First In Front?” I said in wonder.

He came forward, in the flesh. Tucked his coup stick beneath one arm, reached out and grasped my upper arm and bicep in his strong and calloused hand. Squeezed.

Real.

In the flesh.

He grinned. “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.”

“You won’t hit me if I ask you to call me Kemosabe, will you?”

Laughter.

Otto shook his head. “This is something I have never seen before.”

“That’s saying something,” Burt said. “Given your history.”

“Yes,” Tigre said. “So say we all. Shall we go?”

“You know the way?” I said.

She looked at me. Green eyes, tinged with yellow. Loving eyes.

“Yes, Marius,” she said. “I know the way. I have been to Hell before. With you.”

“So many stories,” Otto said. “Please, Lady. Lead us.”

She padded ahead, looked back over her shoulder fetchingly, and said, “Follow me.”

Did I mention that she sounds like a young Lauren Bacall?

You do know who Lauren Bacall was, right?

Led by a tiger with the voice of Lauren Bacall, a raven from Brooklyn, a Lakota war chief with a deep Welsh baritone, and protected by Hitler’s personal bodyguard and hit man, I crossed the Portal threshold into the Gates of Hell.

I love my life.

Chapter 25

“So,” Otto said. “Just how does this all work?”

“The Sword,” Tigre said. Beyond the Portal, there was more of the same, except that the tunnel widened out and then became a path carved into the sides of an increasingly wider cavern; the path growing broader as well, with room for Otto and I to walk abreast following Tigre, while Burt and First In Front padded behind. (Yes, padded, because for some reason Burt was walking instead of flying, which gave me some concern considering the amount of room he had).

“The Sword? What Sword?” Otto said.

“Marius carries The Sword. His wand, or rather, his sword…” she went on.

Because yes, once we’d crossed the threshold into Hell, not only had my spirit guides assumed what certainly felt, appeared and sounded like the flesh, but my wand had become a metal sword, with a handle wrapped in rawhide leather, that I carried at the ready. I wish I could say I felt and looked like Conan with his sword, but it was more like the young Bilbo with Sting in the cave where he first met Gollum.

“…is a Sword, or rather, *the* Sword, of Michael.”

“The Archangel’s Sword?” Otto said.

“Yes. One of many. Or rather, one facet of the Sword itself. Like a hologram…each fragment contains the whole of the original. That Sword he carries is a channel for all the power of the Archangel Michael—as is each of the other Swords in the World, as is the Original Sword of Michael which he carries always.”

“One is all, and all is one?” Otto said.

“Absolutely,” Tigre said. Her voice would render most men to throbbing helplessness, were it not for the fact it issued over awe-inspiring fangs propelled by massive paws heavily clawed. “Quantum physics. String theory. Or whatever flavor of the cutting edge science you want to call on. That Sword can open the Portal of Hell and transport all of us, in the flesh, into this portion of the Other Realms. It carries all the power of the Sword that Michael used to strike down the Adversary, the same Power that binds him and his.”

Otto eyed me. “Astonishing. He is most blessed.”

“Yes,” Tigre said. “He is. There are Few that are Chosen, and all are heavily tested. And it can be taken back. It can only be used with Right Discernment.”

“That’s comforting,” I said.

“Ha,” Burt said. “That’s why you’ve got us along, friend.”

“Why aren’t you flying ahead?” I said.

“Because there’s strength in numbers, and there’s things flying in here I don’t want to run into without you big boys backing my play, you know what I’m saying?” Burt said. “And you didn’t ask me.”

“What, exactly, can we, um, *do* here, Tigre?” I said.

“Anything you can imagine or manifest, if you stay connected to the Light of the Creator through the Sword.”

“Can we be hurt?” I asked.

She stopped and regarded me with her loving feral eyes. “We can all be killed or bound here, Marius. As we are in the flesh. As can you and Otto. We can be injured, we can be maimed. But then, so will *anything* we encounter, including the demonic all the way up through the demi-demons up to the big one himself…we are on, as you say, a level playing ground.”

“As to tactics,” Otto said, as a good commando would, “do all the weapons work?”

“Yes,” she said. “And magic or energy casting as well. And the Holy Water, which is even more potent here than elsewhere. Be sparing with it.”

Great. At least we were heavily armed with the right stuff to be walking down the driveway to Hell.

My white tiger continued to lead the way.

Impressions of Hell: surprisingly banal. No Guardians or other denizens, which surprised me…

“All of us,” First In Front added.

…and the impression was of a widening cavern, with the staircase gradually morphed into a wide, broad path, paved with carefully fitted stone. There was no visible source of light, but somehow the cavern was lit enough so we could see our way as we descended.

Ahead of us, as the path wound round, we saw glimmering lights that grew as we came closer.

“Hey, Otto,” I said.

“Yes, Marius?”

“You like to read?”

“Very much so. It is one of my great pleasures.”

“Like science fiction, fantasy, that kind of thing?”

Otto found that amusing. “Only the best. As you can see, it’s hard to compete with real life.”

“True, that,” I said. “Ever read Roger Zelazny?”

“Oh, yes. Brilliant author. He was very much attuned to the Other Realms. Did you read The Amber Series?”

“Absolutely. Rocks socks. Did you ever read
Lord of Light
?”

“Yes. Of course. I believe that was his first Hugo and Nebula winner?”

“You remember the sequence when the Great-Souled Sam descends into Hellwell to free the Rakasha?”

“Vaguely…wait, yes, of course.”

“Take a look around. Remind you of anything?”

There was an alcove in the wall ahead, where a dim grave light gleamed. We were almost abreast of it.

“He’s descending on the path into Hell when he comes up next to one of these glowing alcoves and…”

The trapped spirit within the alcove threw itself against the gleaming light that enclosed and bound it.

“Free me, master, and I will lay the world at your feet!” it shrieked.

We stopped and looked at it. Mostly human, though the face was twisted in a constantly shifting display of extreme emotions: anger, puzzlement, pure rage, disdain…over and over again, like a neon sign blinking through it’s predetermined sequence.

“Life as a sci-fi novel,” I said.

“It goes through the same sequence,” Otto said.

“Yes,” Tigre said. “The dominant emotions in it’s previous life. Played over and over again until it somehow masters them and breaks the cycle.”

“I guess that’s a good working definition of life in Hell,” I said.

“It isn’t life,” Burt said. “It’s Hell.”

Otto stared. The light from the binding gleamed on his face.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“There but for Fortune go you and I, my friend.”

“There but for God,” I said. “And the White Light of the Creator.”

He was silent. Regarded the bound, who stared at him beseechingly. “Why does it ask us to free it?”

First In Front answered that. “The Sword binds. What it binds, it can unbind.”

Otto looked at the gleaming length of metal in my hands, looked into my eyes.

“A dangerous power,” he observed.

“The most dangerous,” Tigre said. “The power to slay…the power to heal. The power to bind…the power to free. Dangerous to the wielder, dangerous to the foe. Not for any one. And not for ever…at least in mortal life.”

“Uh, I wish you guys wouldn’t talk as though I’m not here,” I said.

Tigre laughed. “Follow me, boys.”

And led the way.

Otto lingered, staring at the bound spirit, followed behind us.

As we descended, a light began to glow in the Sword. A pale blue glow at first, that began at the edge and the point and then began to deepen in color, becoming almost cobalt, brilliant enough to light the way, almost enough to dazzle my eyes. Tigre looked back over her shoulder (OMG, what a…feminine…power.…) and smiled, if the baring of massive fangs and crinkling eyes meant the same thing in a tiger as in a human female.

“The power grows,” she said.

“Does this mean…orcs?” I said.

“We will meet something very similar, soon,” Tigre said. “The power grows as we descend. The Power of the Light grows from two poles: complete Light and complete Dark. We’re descending into the Dark, and as we approach that pole, the Light of the Creator grows to match it. You’re a Light Bearer, a Path Finder, a Sword of Michael, Marius. This is *your* destiny.”

I held the blade up above my head, just like Luke in
Star Wars
. My guides and allies all paused for a moment. Otto stared up at the sword, at me, then bowed his head in respect.

“If you’re done channeling your boyhood fantasies,” First In Front said. “We have a friend to rescue.”

“Yes,” Tigre said. “We must hasten.”

She lowered her head…and then she grew. Like to the size of a midsize Mack truck. Now I’d seen this before in the Other Realms…but to see it with physical eyes, smell it, touch it…that was a whole ’nother thing. She flattened out on her belly, tilted her head and whispered, “Mount me.”

Um, remember what I said about the young Lauren Bacall? Imagine that whispered…I’d say it was overwhelmingly arousing, but I wouldn’t want to incite her anger. Don’t mess with the Goddess in *any* of her incarnations or manifestations, that’s my rule.

“Um, ah, yes, absolutely,” I said.

And I don’t think it was my imagination that I saw a sly grin come across that fierce visage before she turned away to keep her eyes on the descending trail.

We slid up onto her back, me in front, First in Front behind me, then Otto, facing rear for rear security. Burt flapped his wings.

“Love you to pieces, sweetheart, but this ol’ Raven is gonna hang onto his dignity and fly,” he said.

And in the way of power animals and guides, he flapped his wings and hovered just above, eyes up, our own aerial surveillance and acquisition platform.

Tigre came up off the ground. Her fur was silken beneath us, pulsed with her breath and the pounding pounding pounding of her gigantic heart.

“Hang on, boys,” she purred. “It might be a bumpy ride.”

She began to bound down the trail, in long loping leaps, that ate up distance, more and more in each bound…

“Hey Otto,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Did you read Zelazny’s
Creatures of Light and Darkness
?”

“Of course.”

“Steel General?”

He laughed. “My favorite character of all. You are thinking his mount?”

“Yep.”

“Perhaps someday they will make a film of that novel. Epic in reach. One of his best and often overlooked.”

So there we were, loping down into the bowels of Hell, mounted on the back of a gigantic spirit Tiger, me, a Lakota War Chief, Hitler’s best commando and a big black Raven…

I so looked forward to telling that story to Jolene.

That though brought a welling of emotion up in me. I’d kept it buried, but that’s a dangerous thing for a practitioner—

—“Shaman,” Burt said.

—“Medicine Man,” First In Front said.

—“Light Warrior,” Otto said.

Tigre laughed. “Hard headed mortal.”

Like I was saying, a dangerous thing for a practitioner to do, keep emotions buried—emotions provide the charge for the Work, or they can—and buried emotions are like land mines, nuclear land mines, that can go off with little or no warning. Part of the ongoing task of the Light Worker is working to keep the channel clear, that’s to clear out the stuff that comes up and out with life. None of us are perfect, that’s the point, it’s the constant process and the journey that is the destination.

So we have to work on our stuff constantly.

But back to anger, rage, borne out of fear…I feared for her. And that enraged me. And I had to let that come up so that it can be released and transformed. Use it. Release the energy. Easier said than done. Transform it into love, which means I had to get past the fear and connect with the deep love I had for her…

“And she for you,” Tigre said.

“Yes,” I said. “And she for me.”

“Mind on the ball,” First In Front said.

“You play ball?” I said, surprised.

“We Natives invented it, white man.”

Um, okay.

The alcoves that held trapped souls and spirits grew more numerous, began to stack up in rows above one another, each glowing like a light, making the way brighter, though we passed them in a blur: there were glimmers of faces, hands clawing at the bounds, some huddled and staring…all of them calling out variations on “Free us! Free us!”

Ahead, a widening in the path, like a mezzanine (some part of me was giddy with thought, wow, I’m at the Mezzanine of Hell), a widening that grew, and lined up across the path, barring our way, small figures that grew, and grew, and grew…

…the first line of Guardians, Dark-Side issue.

Battle.

I raised the Sword. Brilliant blue light rippled across the edge and the point. I pointed it at the growing ranks, and Tigre redoubled her speed, wind howling at my face and blowing my hair straight back. I felt like Gandalf leading the charge of the Rohirrim in
The Two Towers
, except with less hair.

The line grew.

Goat-soldiers. Big ones. The industrial strength and size. About six feet on their hind legs, running all the cool-guy gear—Mayflower nylon, M4s, and…

…enormously oversized penises.

Not to gross you out, but like the size of a baseball bat on steroids, with a spiked ball on the end. Like a mace, but made out of man-parts.

Okay.

Behind the ranks, stood one massive demi-demon—goat-headed, and this guy had an erection (sprouting spikes from the end) like a fire truck ladder.

And a huge double-headed ax.

Game on.

Tigre smashed into the line like one of the Oliphants in the battle for Minas Tirith in
The Return of the King
. (Yes, I’m a
Lord of the Rings
freak…remind me, when we’re done, to tell you how Tolkien channeled the true history of the Middle World into his epic stories…but back to ours…). Long lines of fire arced up at us, but I waved the Sword and a brilliant bubble of blue light surrounded us and it turned back the bullets. The line shattered, tried to regroup and swarm us, but I waved the Sword and the goat-soldiers fell back, like mosquitos against an electric swatter, sparkling as they fell…some of them snatched at Tigre as she burst through them, swatting them aside with great sweeps of her gigantic paws, First In Front slashed at them with his war-knife, cutting them away from their tenuous holds on my white tiger’s fur, Burt led a murder of crows again and again on the scattered and broken line of the goat-soldiers, Otto fired short, discrete bursts from his MP5K, taking out goat-soldiers in a steady accretion of loss…every swinging dick.

And the demi-demon held up his hand, and Tigre stopped.

The goat-soldiers held their fire, and Burt and his brethren circled our heads.