Seraphim (50 page)

“You performed wonderfully,” said the heavyset woman.

“Just like the first time,” said a man with a burly voice. “Almost to the letter.”

Duncan tried to sit up, sliding in his own congealing blood. “Who...who in the hell are you people?”

There was a big black man standing beside him now. “I think I should answer that,” he said.

That voice was familiar. Duncan craned up at the face and, as he blinked his vision clear, recognized the man as his old police lieutenant, Mo White.

“Mo?” he said. “You’re not supposed to be here yet.”

“This is intermission,” Mo said. “And in answer to your question, we’re the ones who helped bring you and the seraph back to this night.”

The taste of gunpowder was still thick in Duncan’s throat. “I’m sorry, the
seraph?
”

“That’s right. It’s living inside you. On the force, this is what we call field training.”

“Translate.”

Mo placed a hand on Duncan’s head, and immediately the throbbing pain decreased, his breathing returned to normal. “See, McNeil, the events of this very night are what entrusted you to the seraph, why it chose you to be what has been a long line of tutors. And in your case, a breeder, too. Being a veteran police officer, and later a homicide detective, you’re a veritable encyclopedia on the perversions of mankind. But a very special set of circumstances pervade this evening. The seraph’s especially interested in learning from your conduct, what led you to become so reviling, so merciless against your solemn pledge to perform the contrary. And, likewise, it’s fascinated by the emotions that are conversely interwoven with your actions; you know, the shame, remorse, guilt, dishonor.”

“You mean, it learns from irony.”

“Oh, it loves irony. And that you did it out of something that you thought was love, well...”

“My connection with Patricia and Kathy seems a bit coincidental, don’t you think?”

“It knew the role you would play in their lives years before you were ever on the scene. A gifted psychic tipped us off when she passed over. I shouldn’t say gifted—she was blessed. She saw this night, among others, and its connection to Patricia and Katherine Bently.”

“I was snitched out?” Duncan said. “By a ghost?”

“Amy will explain it to you in due time.”

“Well, I doubt the seraph commends my chivalry.”

“It ain’t here to judge you, m’man. It’s here to learn. It’s here to save its ass
,
and by consequence save everyone else’s. When Gamble first came along, he slaughtered all of its kind. They didn’t know how to fight back, didn’t have a clue. They were too pure of God. But somehow this one managed to escape and hide in the mind of man. Not in the collective mind, like Gamble, but in the individual mind. From there it started breeding, creating a population of half-breeds. Us. Given our heritage, though, we’ll never be strong enough to take on Gamble, even as a group. Only the seraph has the potential to destroy the clone devil.”

“Then why did it find it necessary to breed?”

“The seraph figured out, because of our genetic link to man, that we’d be able to travel through time. See, it has no perception of time—not the faulty ways in which man does. We have a kind of symbiotic relationship with the seraph, as far as an understanding of time goes. It learned this the very first day of kindergarten. But I don’t expect you to understand. You don’t have the dimensional capacity. So, it set about sowing its seed. We also keep a vigilant watch, making sure that Gamble never catches wind of it whereabouts.”

“So, it was stuck in idle until the first of your kind matured.”

“Yeah, it stayed hidden. First and foremost, it learned what it was to be secretive. As far as our maturity goes, we grow up very fast. Take your daughter. She may only be ten in human years, but in angel years she has an adult form, when she wishes to assume it.”

“What about Gamble? I mean, can’t he just travel through time and make things miserable for you guys?”

“No. Gamble can’t time travel. That’s where we have the edge.”

“Okay, if you’re all so clever, then why not just travel back far enough and prevent Gamble’s own creation?”

“We only have a vague idea when, and haven’t the foggiest idea where, to look. The collective mind is as vast as the universe. And we’re not as clever as you might think. We make mistakes. And the seraph’s very strict when it comes to the use of time travel. You see, the more we do it, the more degraded our ability becomes.”

“When I met Gamble, just before I was brought back, he was insistent that I not make the same mistake twice. Care to tell me why?”

“Gamble knows about our travels in time. And by now he might very well know why, but there’s not a damned thing he can do about it.”

“What about you guys? Are you able to fight back, or did you inherit the seraph’s impotence for aggression?”

“Each succeeding offspring shows a marked improvement, parallel to the seraph’s level at the time of its conception.”

“So the more recent ones are meaner than the older ones?”

“That’s right.”

Duncan managed a smile. “Then that must mean my daughter has quite the temper.”

“Being the baby of the bunch, that’s why she’s in charge. She’s one spiteful lady.”

“Where
is
Amy?”

“I’m afraid she’s indisposed right now. But listen, this night just isn’t about the seraph reliving one of its favorite lessons again. It’s about you learning something, too. It’s time you straighten up and take inventory, m’man. The seraph wants you to take something back with you tonight.”

“What, that I’m an asshole?”

“I can’t tell you what,” Mo said. “That’s against the rules. The seraph still can’t help but play the divinity game sometimes. You have to figure it out for yourself.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then I have a feeling we’ll be having this conversation once again, same time, same place.”

Duncan watched a tall, thin woman remove the ski mask from Tyler’s face.

The heavyset woman was back, this time with a baby in her arms. “Step aside,” she said. “It’s time to brand the boy.”

With a great big smile, Mo said, “This is one of the other victuals that the seraph loves about this night.”

The heavyset woman placed the infant on Duncan’s vest and, gently rolling its head, swiped its mouth across the pooling blood.

It began to cry. The heavyset woman lifted the baby away, and she whispered, “Thank you.”

“The seraph’s signature is in your blood,” Mo said. “Now it’s in the baby.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s so the seraph can track it down later,” Mo said.

“No, I mean, what’s so important about the baby?”

“I was getting to that. Now, this boy, just given—and what will continue to be once we resume here—its extreme proximity to the discharges of its mother’s handgun, will be rendered, for all intents and purposes, deaf as a stone. Interestingly, what the seraph will discover twelve years from now is that this boy, at the age of thirteen, will be the leader of one of the nastiest juvenile gangs in Chicago.”

“And...”

“This boy will find a way to overcome his disability in such a way that not only will he heroically succeed in gaining the respect of his peers, but his very nature as a hardened and riotous delinquent will prove to be quintessential in the seraph’s final stages of learning. You see, the seraph has a disability too—
a learning disability
. It has spent generation upon generation studying the nuances and subtleties and incongruities of wars and violence of all kind, of every conceivable atrocity committed by man against man, all the while overlooking one vital ingredient. It won’t be until it begins living vicariously within the boy, throughout the pivotal moments of his life, that it finally learns something integral, something that it was lacking, something that it can finally put behind all the aggression, put behind the fight, and that something is
confidence
. Without the will, the resolve, defeat is a cruel mistress.”

“The boy will teach it to have faith in itself.”

“Exactly.”

Duncan was listing to one side now, his right shoulder nearly touching the floor. “Are we through here, Mo? I’d like to get this night over with.”

“Okay, buddy,” Mo said, “tell you what I’m gonna do. As in the other times, we haven’t let you remember this part of the evening, but as a gift to you, I’m gonna let you keep this memory—only because I feel confident that you’re later gonna blossom with self-discovery. It’s vitally important to the seraph that you do. It owes you one. So don’t disappoint me. Ya dig?”

“I dig.”

There was an immediate burst of light, then…

*****

He was standing again, reaching for the door, taking up where he’d left off.

In the living room directly before him stood the woman with the baby in her arms, grinning at him as she increased the pressure on the trigger of her gun. The baby was wailing to beat the band.

Everyone else was still at the table, the portly Hispanic male standing now. “Shoot that motherfucker!” he ordered the woman.

(
Get out!
Duncan warned his younger self.
She’s going to shoot you in the back!
)

Duncan opened the door—and there stood Lieutenant Mo White. Instantly, he jumped in front of the lieutenant. Mo stumbled backward just as a bullet punched though Duncan’s vest and lower right back. He wet his pants as he fell to the lawn and began praying for God’s forgiveness, something he hadn’t done since he was a teenager, when he still believed absolution was something obtainable.

Another bullet, her last, splintered the door jam.

As he rolled onto his back, he couldn’t decide which burned deeper: the bullet holes, or his hypocrisy.

Mo turned him on his side.

Long blades of grass were poking at his lips. He stuck his tongue out and licked at the dew, moaning at the sweetness.

Without manhandling him too much, Mo removed Duncan’s vest, ripped his blue wool sweater up the middle, turned him over, then plugged the entrance and exit wounds with his fingers.

Duncan reached up to touch the Saint Christopher medal dangling from Mo’s neck.

The silver was captivating.

“Easy, buddy, easy.”

(No, it wasn’t St. Christopher at all, he now realized. It looked...it looked like...

It was a silver dog tag, and the insignia was evident to him. It was the same symbol that was on the grips of Dead Man’s gun. And, he realized, it may very well have been the design on Dr. Strickland’s necklace. It was unarguably iconoclast, as a sword was centered between seven dragons’ heads, all embossed over a lambs head touting seven horns and seven eyes. When Duncan had first seen the emblems on the grips, it struck him as being fanatically Semitic, but he hadn’t given it any more thought until now.

He recalled the table discussion they’d had the night before. Mrs. Pendleton had told them that the number seven was significant to many religious tomes, the
Holy Bible
included. She’d mentioned the Seven Seals, Seven Angels, Seven Candles, Seven deadly Sins, Seven Falls of Man...)

“So
you
were the wolf,” Duncan said.

“Naw, that was someone else. We all got the same jeweler.”

Duncan pointed to the open door. “Tyler.”

“Tyler’s dead,” Mo said. “I’m sorry.”

Just then, two men in plain clothes appeared at the doorway, guns drawn. Duncan recognized them as undercover narcotics officers.

“Freeze!” they ordered as they entered the house, one behind the other.

“Those are my guys,” Mo said. “We got this all worked out. Did you see the load of heroin we bagged? We’re heroes! Hell, I’ll even see that you get a medal for saving my life.”

Duncan reached for the suitcase that had slipped from his hand when he fell to the lawn.

Mo grabbed it before he could. “Don’t worry, McNeil. I’ll make sure Patricia Bently gets the money. Never figured you for such a romantic, though.”

“Makes us even,” Duncan said, his world beginning to spin. “I never figured you for some half-assed angel.”

“Listen up now,” Mo said, removing Duncan’s ski mask. “This is what we’re gonna do. Gonna get your older self back on the bus with the others, so I need you to look up into my eyes.”

Duncan did, and found in their place two black marbles expanding in size, each containing an infinite universe. Within moments they enfolded him, wrapped him like a cocoon, then he turned into a bubble.

10.

Duncan opened his eyes, drew in a large breath of air, and realized he was standing before the doors of the shuttle.

The doors opened and he stepped inside.

All eyes turned to him. Then they left him and fixed upon the driver. Suddenly in Dead Man’s place was sitting a handsome man in his early thirties, wearing a police officer’s dress blues. A five-point hat was resting on his lap.

The very uniform, Duncan now guessed, in which his partner had been buried.

“Nice to see you again, McNeil,” said the driver in a fuller, more replete voice than Dead Man’s.

“I suspected as much,” Duncan said, extending a hand. “Good to have you back, Ty. All the way, I mean.”

“Tyler?” Patricia said, standing now. “
Tyler Everton?
”

“Don’t look so spooked,” Tyler said, then turned to Rachel. “It’s better than my Grim Reaper outfit, isn’t it?”

“But...I went to your funeral,” Patricia said.

Rachel nodded, indicating that she’d attended the memorial service, as well.

“And I appreciate that,” he said. “Really.”

“Then why show up as a corpse?” Rachel said, pissed. “Damn it, why all the games?”

“To help acclimate you, for one,” he said.

Chris and Juanita just stared at the driver, sharing the same bewildered expression.

Duncan said, “This was my—I’m sorry,
is
my partner, Tyler Everton.”

Chris nodded a greeting. “Dude.”

To his partner reborn, Duncan said, “I’m so sorry about what happened back there, Ty. Jesus, if I—”