Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

“Please,” she begged. “Please kill me.”

Batty crouched beside her. “Nobody’s killing anyone. Who’s your significant?”

“… Please . . .”

He leaned in close. “Who turned you? Who’s your significant?”

“I just want to die,” she moaned. “I just want to . . .”

The sharp smell of sulfur filled Batty’s nostrils, and he knew what was coming. The girl moaned and he grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look at him.

“ Who’s your fucking significant? ”

But it was too late. Jumping to his feet, he grabbed Callahan by the shoulders and pulled her away as Ajda began to spasm uncontrollably, crying out in agony.

Callahan’s eyes went wide. “What the hell is wrong with her?”

“Just stay back. There’s nothing we can do.”

The spasms were so bad now, it looked as if Ajda might come apart. Instead, a dagger appeared in her hand, and she reached high in the air before plunging it into her breast. She sighed, and then burst into flames, releasing a long, high, animal wail as her entire body was consumed by fire. Then she imploded into a ball of black dust that disintegrated before their eyes, leaving nothing behind.

No flesh. No bones. No sign that Ajda had ever been there at all. Not even a scorch mark.

“Jesus,” Callahan muttered.

Batty turned to her. “I guess that pretty much clears up any doubts you may have had.”

What are we doing here?” Callahan said. “Don’t you think you should get that arm checked out?”

She looked a bit shell-shocked, but seemed to have recovered from their adventure in the tunnels. Maybe beating the crap out of a raging sycophant had been therapeutic-although Batty didn’t think a lifetime of therapy would get the image of Ajda out of his head.

He had taken his jacket off and wrapped his forearm with it. The wounds were throbbing, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding much now.

They stood in an alley adjacent to the tea shop, where Batty had found a door he assumed led to the kitchen. Across the street, a fire truck and several polis cars were parked in front of the auction house, the crowd of attendees still standing out front in their formal wear. He and Callahan had emerged from the tunnels in another alley, three blocks away, but Batty had insisted they double back.

He rattled the doorknob. “Can you pick this lock?”

“Look,” Callahan said. “Do me a favor.”

“What?”

“When I ask you a direct question, can you show me the courtesy of giving me a direct answer?”

He gestured to the door. “What about my question?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “You answer mine, I’ll answer yours. See how that works? As it is, you’re about a half-dozen behind, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d get straight to the point for once.”

Maybe she hadn’t recovered, after all. She seemed a little touchier than usual.

“All right,” he said, “fair enough. You want to know why we’re here?” She nodded, and he gestured toward the auction house. “Like I told you, that thing you beat the hell out of back there-and I mean that literally, not figuratively-was a waitress at this shop. And when she waited on me this afternoon, I knew there was something off about her.”

“Gee, you think?”

“She was what they call a sycophant,” Batty said. “A human who’s been turned.”

“Turned by what?”

“What else? An angel. A dark one. They get inside your head, play with your emotions, your desires, your fears, but rather than dust you like Gabriela and Ozan and Rebecca, they turn you into one of their slaves.”

“I think I need to sit down.”

“You asked,” Batty said with a shrug.

Callahan sighed. “So what else do I need to know?”

“Interaction with angels is tricky. They exist in a different realm than we do. And in order to work in our world, they need surrogates. Those surrogates come in three forms: skins, sycophants and drudges.”

“Which are?”

“A skin is a physical host. People who have given the angels permission to use their bodies in exchange for a reward of some kind. It doesn’t matter what that reward is, because it’s rarely granted. It’s just a trick they use to get what they want, and when they’re done with the body, it’s discarded and the soul that occupied it is obliterated.”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

“Exactly,” Batty said. “Drudges and sycophants, on the other hand, are basically lackeys. A drudge is exactly what it sounds like. A menial laborer who doesn’t have much brain power and does a lot of the heavy lifting. Think riots at ball games or soldiers run amuck or mindless news anchors, doing whatever their significant tells them to do.”

“Significant?”

“The angel who turned them. You want me to keep going?”

“By all means. What’s another nightmare or two?”

“Then you’ve got your sycophants,” he said. “Like Ajda. When they’re turned, their significant infuses them with a little piece of the otherworld, turning them into what you saw in that tunnel. Kind of a super-lackey who’s been given some independence. But they don’t tend to reveal themselves like that unless they’re threatened somehow.”

“So we were a threat because we’re running around in Ozan’s basement?”

“Maybe,” Batty said. “But Ajda targeted me in that tunnel, so I have a feeling I’m the one she was worried about. I think it started when I sat down and ordered that cup of tea.”

“But why?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out. So can you pick this lock or not?”

Without hesitating, Callahan brought up her foot and kicked the door open, splintering wood, shattering the lock. “How’s that?”

Batty gaped at her, then shot a glance toward the auction house, hoping she hadn’t attracted any undue attention. “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

She waved him past her and Batty stepped into the teahouse kitchen, which wasn’t much more than a stove and a couple of countertops. They moved together through a doorway into the main parlor, which was dotted with chairs and small rectangular tables.

He felt the energy immediately. Knew that his instincts had been right.

“This is where the turning began,” he said, then moved to the center of the room. Crouching down, he put his hand to the floor and closed his eyes. It took very little to call up the vision. A dark wind rose, began swirling around him, and he saw two figures on the floor, in this very spot-

– Two women, half naked, writhing in ecstasy, and one of them was clearly Ajda.

Then Batty found himself inside Ajda’s mind, which was a swirl of confusion. She felt both exhilarated and afraid, but most of all free. This was something she had never experienced before and it was wonderful. She wanted more. As much as she could get.

But the face of the woman who was doing this to her-the dark angel’s face-eluded Batty. Was nothing more than a blur. He knew from experience that his vision was limited to the amount of energy he could draw from the room, and even though it was strong, he wasn’t sure there was enough here to bring that face into focus.

But he had to try.

Narrowing his concentration, he zeroed in on the other woman. Ajda’s significant. His own energy, his physical energy, started to drain away, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sustain this for long or he’d wind up in that hospital bed Callahan had threatened him with.

But he didn’t give up. Concentrated even harder.

The lens he was peering through began to turn and shift, the dark angel’s face slowly taking shape, coming into focus. And when it finally did, it was like a knee to the balls. Batty felt the wind go out of him as bile began to rise in his throat.