War-N-Wit, Inc. – MeanStreet, LLC (12 page)

Micah and friend perched on rocky seats, waiting for us.

Meooooowwww!

Enough.

“Nope, sorry, son. That
meoowww
is out of business. Give. Right here, right now. Change your ass back to human—or angel—or whatever the hell it is form and start talkin’. In English.”

* * *

Lucifer frowned and looked up from the paperwork on his desk. New contracts were a bitch to review. What the hell was all the commotion coming from his assistant’s desk out front?

“You can’t just barge in here without an appointment! The boss is a busy man!”

“Watch us.”

The door swung open
and the Smith brothers sauntered in.

“Yo, Lucy! Whut up, dude?”

“Well, well, long time no see, huh, Lucy?”

“You still loosey-goosey, Lucy?”

“
Don’t call me Lucy!
I
hate
it when you call me Lucy!”

“Stop grinding your teeth, Lucy, you know that causes all kind of dental problems.”
Rafael smiled and sat down in one of the arm chairs in front of Lucifer’s desk, draping his left leg casually over the arm.

Gabriel plopped down in the other arm chair and draped his right leg casually over the arm.

“Well, that’s just rude, you guys taking both the good chairs.” Michael pulled up a straight-backed side chair, twirled it around, and sat down with his feet draped around the sides and hands folded across the chair back, chin resting on his folded hands.

“
How’d you get in here? This is my turf. The Grand Conductor brother-proofed the boundaries so we
couldn’t
cross between your territories and mine. But since you did, you know you broke the treaty and I’m not bound by any of its terms, right?”

“Listen up, bro
,” said Gabriel. “
You
broke the treaty. And we know it. We found your little back door, we’ve always known you had one. You’ve been using it for years. You really thought you were slipping that over on us? So all rules are off already.”

Lucifer leaned back in his deluxe desk chair. “Really? So if you’ve always known, why wait till now to do something about it?”

Rafael laughed. “Because you’re just so damn
cute
when you go out in disguise, Lucy! I mean, some of those outfits! Really? But this one—this one we can’t let pass for ol’ times sake, bro, sorry. So spill it.”

Lucifer raised his eyebrow. “Spill what?”

“That damn raised eyebrow was always your giveaway, Lucy.” Michael stood up and flipped the chair away. He walked up to Lucy’s desk and slammed his hands down on the surface. “We know about the inter-dimensional breaches. All three of them. Inter-dimensional breaches only happen when one of us fall. You already been there, done that. So who’s fallen? And why’d you want him to?”

“
Aren’t you giving me too much credit? Why’d you think I
wanted
anybody else to fall?”

Rafael stood up and slammed his hands down on the desk.
“Because we got
long
memories, Lucy. About you and that Razkaal head honcho. And how well you got along. About how similar the Razkaal dimension is to your turf. About how
fond
the Razkaal demons are of humans. And why.”

Gabriel joined the circle of slammed hands on the desk.
“You and the Razkaal man? Marriage made in Hell. But you can’t
really
get together without another breach. And you can’t make one big enough by yourself. Not again. So you need somebody else to. We’re pretty sure we know who. But being the good guys just sucks sometimes. Can’t just go around accusing falsely, you know.”

“And you think I give a damn about your little ethical dilemma?”

“Oh, hell no. You don’t give a damn about anything or anybody except your own little deals. And we’re about to put
toot finite
on one of those deals, ‘cause we know damn well it involves those breaches. And we’re about to seal them. Permanently. You might have cooked your goose with the Grand Conductor on this one, bro.”

“Oh!” Lucy clutched his heart. “I’m scared! Stop!”
He laughed. “I’m safe as Fort Knox, bro. Remember last time? Even the Grand Conductor said it. There has to be a balance between darkness and light. And I’m it. My whole
raison d'être
. Without me, there’s no balance. Know what that means? You can’t touch me!”

“
Oh, c’mon, Lucy, finish it out! Go ahead, say
nanny nanny boo-boo
, why don’t you? But you know what they say.
He who laughs last, laughs loudest.
” Raphael shrugged. “Or something like that.”

Chapter Sixteen

Meoooowww!

“I said enough of the meow thing. Human form. Front and center.
Now!
”

And in the blink of eye, there he was. Micah. My Micah. The doctor-biker in the leather jacket with “The Guardians” stitched in fancy font. The man I’d seen in the club right before the show started.
The teenage girl I’d seen with him in the club was lovely. Eighteen, maybe, I thought. Possibly nineteen. Certainly she wasn’t twenty yet, though her eyes spoke of ancient wisdom not commonly possessed by girls her age.

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“Not much is, sweetheart,” Micah confirmed. “What in particular isn’t fair?”

“Her.” I pointed. “She’s too young to be an angel.”

“You know, that’s exactly what I told G. Didn’t make any difference, though. Ari, this is Mia. Mia, this is Ari. And I believe you should do the formal introductions for your Mom and Stacy, don’t you?”

“Can I get a hug first?”

“Thought you’d never ask. You’re one special lady, Ariel Anson Garrett.”

“You’re one special cat, Micah. Angel of the Divine Path.”

“The internet knows that?”

“Technology’s
a wonderful thing, huh?”

We hugged. I felt the power flowing from him, greater than any force I’d ever felt. What a wondrous creation an angel was.

I wiped my suspiciously moist eyes and turned to my family. “Mom, this is Micah. And his friend, Mia. Micah, Mia, this is my Mom. Grace Anson.”

“The cats who jumped in the box with us?”

“’Fraid so, yeah.”

“Well, I’ll just be damned.”

I laughed. Mom never ceased to amaze me. What a trooper.

“I doubt that sincerely. Don’t you, Micah?”

“Not in a million years would a soul like yours be damned, Grace. Even your name would never allow it.”

“
Stacy, meet Micah and Mia. In the flesh, so to speak, seeing as how y’all already sorta met in Daytona. Micah, Mia, this is my sister Stacy Anson, soon to be Forrester.”

“Please to meet you both. In the flesh, so to speak.
Let's not stand on formality here.” Stacy reached out for her own hug. I believe I’ve said before us southerners are huggers. We hug everybody. As they embraced, force waves rolled off them and washed over me, almost knocking me down. They separated. Micah’s face was white.

“No,” Micah whispered.

“No what?”

“No, she’s not just Stacy. She’s—she was—Hannah?”

Stacy’s face turned as white as Micah’s.

“Micah?
Micah!
Oh, my God! I never thought I’d see you again! Even if I didn’t remember!” She threw herself back into his arms. He picked her up and twirled her in a circle. Both of them cried and laughed at the same time.

“Oh, dear!” Mom tugged worriedly at my arm. “They do seem to know each other, don’t they?
Really well.”

“Yeah, they do. But I don’t think it’s quite what you’re worried about, Mom.”

Micah put her down and I moved between them. I held out the Tear of Isis, that ancient crystal I’d found myself the unwitting guardian of, the crystal pendant I’d brought to Vegas and worn tonight, having no idea why.

“Okay, you two.
Attention! Look into this!” I held the Tear up and out by the chain and gazed into it with them, exercising the power of the Seer of the Tear of Isis, to share in the re-living of memories. The memories of reincarnated souls unleashed by the power of the Tear.

* * *

Hills. Rocky hills. Barren hills. Baking heat of the Middle East. The Negev, that was it. The Negev Desert. Guerrilla warriors entrenched in the rocks, bound for Betar where Simon Bar Kochba held off Hadrian’s Roman Legions. It wasn’t the first time the Hebrew warriors grew fangs and revolted against the invading foreigners determined to rock the foundations of Judaism. This crop of rebels learned much from the failures of the Maccabee Rebellion, finally quelled in 70 AD, 70 CE if one wanted to be politically correct as to the measurement of years. Bar Kochba’s Second Jewish Rebellion, beginning in Judea in 132 AD/CE, established an independent Jewish State that held for two years.

Rome answered with s
ix full Legions. Over the months, the sheer force of numbers took their toll on both sides, a toll so great that Hadrian changed the traditional greeting of Emperor to Senate and did not say, “I and the Army are in health.” The Army wasn’t in health but Rome had one thing the Jewish rebels didn’t. A steady flow of bodies to replace the bodies that fell.

Now, three years into the Rebellion,
only small bands like this band of twenty remained, bands that struck with lightning speed and the fury of thunder and disappeared back into the interlocking caves of the Judean hills, almost impossible to track and destroy. The end was near, though, and they knew it. Fifty fortified towns and almost a thousand villages burned to the ground, the landscape littered with bodies. Only Betar, that last fortress in the Judean Highlands, remained. And without reinforcements, Simon Bar Kochba wouldn’t hold it much longer.

T
he two men who led this band moved away from the group to look out and down from the rocks at the Roman forces spreading out in front of them.

“They’re flanking us
, Micah. We have to move before there’s nowhere to go.”

“
Aaron, there’s already nowhere to go. You know that. There aren’t any caves near.”

A third rebel slipped between the two.
A woman, too thin. These years in the hills had taken their toll on them all. “Then we fight.”

“Hannah—”

“
Ssssh.
I know, you don’t have to tell me. It’s a good day to die. A good way to die. Between my brother and my husband.” She reached over and hugged the rebel on her left tightly. Then she reached over and up to the rebel on her right, put her hand around his neck to pull him close to her and kissed him fiercely. Aaron raised his head and locked eyes with his brother-in-law, confirming the unspoken agreement between them. Whatever happened, she’d never be taken by the Romans. No matter what.

I knew them. I knew them all. As my sister. As Micah, the Angel of the Divine Path. As
Dr. Stuart “Spike” Forrester.

The Romans surged up the hills. As one, the two men
pulled their short swords and plunged them into the woman’s heart. They couldn’t take the chance of falling themselves without being certain she wouldn’t endure the long, agonizing death of Roman fury. She made no sound, other than short gasps. Her eyes, full of pain, glowed with love. “Love you both. We’ll see each other again.” And she was gone.

Agonized roars of rage
and grief ripped from their throats as they met the Romans. It was short. It was brutal. And at the end of the day, back down in the flat desert at the foot of the hills where they’d made their last stand, five crosses stood in a row. For two of the men on those crosses, this agony paled in comparison with the memory of Hannah’s eyes as she died.

* * *

I forced myself out of the immobility of the Seer’s trance and wiped the tears running down my face.

“Oh. Dear. God.”

Stacy smiled and hugged me close. “It was a long time ago, Ari. We all got our little past lives to tote around with us.”

I laughed. “Yeah, but it makes me tired to think about it. How many times we’ve all found each other. Chad and me. You and Spike. And finally—you’ve found Micah.
Who for some reason isn’t reincarnating over and over again like all of us.”

“Yeah, that’s been a bitch,” Micah said. “I asked about it, why I wasn’t a repeater—”

“That’s what we are? Repeaters?”

“That’s the cosmic technical phrase, yeah. But the only answer I got was ‘because’”.

“Well, ours is not to reason why and all that jazz,” said Stacy brightly. “And right now ours is to—”

“Figure out why in the hell
, pun intended, these demons want humans. And then figure out a way to kick their butts.”