CHAPTER DEUX
Chapter Two of the Epic Saga Nobody Reads!
Break the Sky
Chapter 1
Planning Session
In which the nature of The Underneath is more fully explained; the other side of the looking glass; in which we meet a large gentleman of singularly unpleasant disposition.
“So you're saying he isn't trustworthy.”
Ashlan barked a short laugh; unfortunate timing, since it made him spray cheeseburger bits everywhere. He swallowed “Josephus? Trustworthy?”
“So that's a big yes, then.”
“That is a big yes. The biggest yes,” Ashlan shook his head, apparently at Jericho's charming naivety “did you see how quickly he just agreed to help me out? He's obviously planning to sell me out or betray me, or at the very least attempt to manipulate me into taking out people he's got some beef with. Trustworthy? No so much.”
Jericho absently swirled a french fry in the dab of ketchup on his plate, making little loops on the porcelain as he gazed off into the distance “so there's no possibility he's going to help us. Or you, really, since he thinks I'm your hypnotized butt buddy.”
“As though you're pretty enough to be my catamite. You have glasses and I have standards, four-eyes,” Jericho grimaced a little at the mental image it conjured while Ashlan laughed “and no, to answer your question. He might very well be extremely helpful. It's just we shouldn't rely on it, and we should never, ever assume we know why.”
“Oh great, conspiracy. I was expecting something a little more...straightforward. Like, you bust into a warehouse and kill a bunch of people,” Jericho took a melancholy slurp from his milkshake “preferably, I must say, with a katana.”
“You've been watching those Blade movies again, haven't you. Well, yes. There will be a lot of that but...okay, the Underneath.”
“Stupid name.”
“No argument. Okay, so you've got all these creatures, right? The only thing they have in common is that they're individually powerful, they feed off humanity in some way, and they're not supposed to be real, right?”
“I still can't fucking believe that werewolves-”
“Jer, you gotta let the werewolves go. Just for right this moment. Alright? Plenty of times to discuss your lycanthrophobia later.”
“Are you shitting me? Lycanthropho-”
“Patience, my son! Patience, and perhaps you will learn something,” Ashlan said gravely.
“Hai, sensei.”
“Well, you've got all these powerful creatures with...somewhat common interests, right? Well, powerful as they are, they can be killed. If humanity were ever tipped off, they'd die. The casualties on the human side would probably be...unpleasant, but it could be done. Faster than you'd imagine. It's what happened to most of my folk, way back when.”
“Really? Humans went to war with the nephilim?” Jericho narrowed his eyes “when was this, exactly?”
“They called it the Third Crusade,” Ashlan replied, moodily “Fucking Templars.”
“...Templars. Like...the Knights Templar.”
“Oh yeah. They make the Freemasons look like the fucking Cub scouts,” Ashlan scoured the bottom of his empty glass, that had once contained a root beer float, and clarified “They own Norway, you know. Every square inch. Anyway, so the Underneath was formed to...I guess, regulate commerce. Much as they hate each other, all of them realize that there needs to be some kind of governing body, mostly to arbitrate disputes and ensure the continuing ignorance of the human race. Hence, the Underneath. Massive, ancient, powerful supernatural cabal.”
“And you're going to destroy it.”
“Absolutely,” Ashlan nodded vigorously, making a curt gesture to a passing waitress for the check “I want all of the nasty night creatures terrified and disenfranchised. Jer, I know this is going to sound, uh, old Ashlan to you, but...in the end, it's going to have to come down to a choice between following me, or death. Or...re-death, I suppose, if you count the vamp-”
“Please move on.”
“Pansy. Anyway, yes. Now, I know of three members of the high council on the west coast, so to speak. There's Jennifer Morgan, vampire, fairly ancient. She's set up with her coven somewhere down in Sebastapol, I think. There's Aengus McPharlan. He's...one of those weird things. A wizard, certainly. He's in San Diego, or was the last time I heard of him. I figure I'll start there.”
“And the third?”
“The third is Patrick O'Hare,” Ashlan smiled thinly “he's a vampire. And he lives here, in the city by the bay. So he's the first.”
“What about what Josephus' assertion that there's already a war going on?”
Ashlan shrugged “should I care? If it's got them distracted...”
“Sounds to me like it might have them cautious.”
“Cool,” Ashlan said “wouldn't want it to be too easy, would we?”
“Ashlan, I was wondering...I know I'm like, your mascot or whatever...”
“In lieu of being my raunchy brainwashed sodomy puppet, I suppose. But go on.”
“But what exactly is my role in this?”
Ashlan smiled, and it was his small, chilling smile “oh, come on, Jericho.”
“What?”
“I know what was living in your mind for all those weeks. I know what she left behind.”
“What?” then, “oh.”
“Yes. Oh indeed. When had you planned on telling me?”
Jericho's lips curled into what wasn't really a smile as he stared down at his plate “I kind of thought I was going crazy.”
“No, although that's certainly possible. She's gone, Jer, but if she hadn't left some stuff in your mind I'd have been very surprised. There isn't really...room for an angel in a human brain, especially not for any length of time. There have to be remnants. She had to have made room.”
“Azazel's dead, Ashlan.”
Azazel. The angel that had set up shop in his brain. The crazed, suffering thing. Jericho had mercifully few memories of that time, most of them tinged with a desperate madness that consumed everything. He tried to summon an image of how she'd looked, in his mind, when they'd thought of herself. When they'd been two riders on one horse.
All he could remember was the heart-stopping sadness of her smile, the sweetness of her voice, beneath her mad, mad eyes.
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry.
“True. She's definitely dead. I know that. You might recall that I was there,” Ashlan said, infuriatingly nonchalant “your eyes are looking at one level, and hers are looking at another. You're staring crosswise at reality. I've heard about it happening before.”
“Do you have any idea,” Jericho said quietly “how strange it is to be looking at this table, and suddenly I'm seeing the dead cells of the wood, the individual atoms spinning, the carbon chains-” his voice strange and desperate “and sometimes I think I'm seeing it's movement through time, and it's-”
Ashlan reached over the table and smacked Jericho upside the head.
“Ow!”
“I see a lot better than you squishy pink meatmonkeys,” Ashlan said “farther, and clearer, and I think I see farther into the spectrum, as well. But you see things I don't. And most of all, Jer, you think. I...uh, don't, so well. So yeah. I need you. Besides,” he said “who the hell else can warn me when I'm being a wanker?”
Jericho rubbed his head. It had been a light smack from Ashlan, but the man was so damn strong it had been like receiving a fairly solid tap with a crowbar to his temple. On the plus side, he wasn't seeing anything that made him upset.
“Besides, you're in a rare position, you know. Seeing is one step before manipulating. You could be a-”
“Oh holy damnit Christmas-”
“Wizard.”
Jericho stared at Ashlan for a long, despairing moment, and them buried his face in his arms on the table.
“Jer?”
“M'not a wizard. Not an angel, not a vampire, not a wizard,”
“Of course not, sweetheart,” Ashlan cooed, patting Jericho on the head “you don't have to master the ineffable secrets of creation if you don't want to.”
“My life used to make sense, Ashlan.”
“I know, Jer, I know,” Ashlan consoled “but on the plus side? Chicks are way hotter on this side of the looking glass. Well,” Ashlan clarified “they're mostly dead, or succubi, or occasionally have sentient, carnivorous genitalia. But hey,” he said, reaching out to grip Jericho's forearm “they've got nice tits.”
<><><>
Laurence was asleep, stretched out in a ragged armchair in a dingy living room in the apartment of a recently deceased man, when the goddamn phone started ringing.
Laurence brushed some of his black hair that had escaped it's sloppy ponytail out of his eyes with a bleary gesture. He was suddenly aware that it was two in the afternoon, he'd been sleeping a solid eighteen hours, and, since the former owner was currently in several pieces in the bathtub, having a shower was...problematic.
Damn it. He never thought these things through.
“Laurence,” he said peremptorily as he flipped open the cell phone.
“The doctor has flown into nights embrace,” A spooky female voice replied.
Laurence blinked slowly; the procedure consumed at least five seconds. He was aware, somewhere under the grime and the three days of untended BO and a truly skull-splitting hangover, that these words should mean something to him.
“The fuck,” he didn't phrase it as a question. He hauled himself out of the armchair, holding his aching head and realizing that he was starving, smelly, thirsty, and that the dead guy was really starting to stink.
“Laurence, it's me,” she replied in an altogether normal sort of voice.
“You,” he said, shambling over to the fridge.
“Your sister. Stephanie.”
“Oh hi,” He said, before he took a gulp of distinctly expired orange juice and contemplated that “so some doctor is...jogging at night or something. Cool.”
“I killed Josephus, assclown.”
“Okay,” he replied “I'm shacked up in a little apartment I found on union. Come on over.”
“Am I going to be able to take a shower?” she asked with a distinct note of suspicion in her voice.
“Uh,” he replied lamely, taking a peek through the bathroom door. Between the flies and the congealed things and the goofy expression on the stiff's face (along the lines of “Who are you, enormous man in my bathroom, and why are you carrying a vegetable peeler?”), or at least on the half of it still attached, it was unlikely she'd find the accommodations...sufficient “Sure. I mean, you could.”
“Laurence,” exasperated, she sighed “remember, we're keeping moving so they don't trace us. That means, if you have to kill someone, make it look like an accident. And stop dumping them in the goddamn bathtub.”
“It could have been an accident!” He protested “he could have slipped. In the shower. Onto, uh...” he paused, counting wounds “several machetes.”
She sighed “look, I'm going to check into a residence motel for the next few hours. We'll leave by nightfall. Meet me there, alright?” She hung up.
Great, now he was gonna have to walk somewhere. He closed his eyes and, in a second, he knew where she was, in a general sense. She was moving but in a generally northerly direction. He pulled his enormous grey-brown duster coat, a birthday gift from Stephanie that she swore up and down was an antique worn by an extra in True Grit, and walked out the door.
<><><>
He found her wrapped in a white bathrobe on the hotel bed. Nice place. Two beds, tiny kitchen, tiny bathroom. Maybe he could convince her to stay for a couple of nights; all the people whose homes he'd crashed at in the past few weeks of uncertainty had said all sorts of frankly insulting things and it was starting to threaten his self-esteem.
She didn't look up from her book, some pulpy chick thing about horse racing and fucking stable boys, just pointed towards the bathroom “Shower. Now.”
“Clothes?”
She kept the truck, most of the time. She was so much better at the subtlety thing; or at least she didn't kill people when bored, hungry, angry, horny, tired, or whimsical.
Or for stepping on his foot. God, that really climbed his prick.
“I've got your bag out.”
He showered, and felt marginally more human when he came out, wearing a clean shirt and clean jeans. It was a nice change.
“Now,” she was still absorbed in her rich-middle-aged society woman-on-stableboy-action “I bought groceries. Make lunch.”
He made grilled cheese sandwiches, cutting the crust off his own. He sliced up some pickles, lengthwise, the way she liked it. Two plates, two sandwiches, two cokes, two mini bags of cheetos.
“So you'll never guess who I saw Josephus talking to,” she said after they'd eaten. Laurence was channel surfing on the tiny television, with the sound off.
“Who?”
“Fucking Raykael. He's back in town.”
“Oh, cool.”
Stephanie closed her eyes, probably counting silently back from a hundred.
“No, it's not cool, Laurence,” she responded with exaggerated patience.
“Oh okay,” Laurence replied agreeably “you gonna fish your cheetohs?”
She tossed him what was left of her bag.
“He's here. Do you remember that town that burned down? My sources swear he was involved. He was here, talking to Josephus. This could be a problem.”
Laurence shrugged.
“Then we kill him.”
Stephanie blinked “Hmm. I guess that could work. He's got some human fucktoy with him, let's see if he knows anything first.”
“Kay.”
<><><>
"You know Ashlan, I always thought Norway belonged to the Norwegians."
"Common mistake. Poor bastards are pratically slaves."
"Huh."
“So Jer.”
“Yeah?”
“I'm gonna get you some lessons.”
“...Oh mighty christ, lessons in what.”
“Magi-Jericho, wait, stop running, damn it, my boots have heels!”
Splendid!
Break the Sky
Chapter 1
Planning Session
In which the nature of The Underneath is more fully explained; the other side of the looking glass; in which we meet a large gentleman of singularly unpleasant disposition.
“So you're saying he isn't trustworthy.”
Ashlan barked a short laugh; unfortunate timing, since it made him spray cheeseburger bits everywhere. He swallowed “Josephus? Trustworthy?”
“So that's a big yes, then.”
“That is a big yes. The biggest yes,” Ashlan shook his head, apparently at Jericho's charming naivety “did you see how quickly he just agreed to help me out? He's obviously planning to sell me out or betray me, or at the very least attempt to manipulate me into taking out people he's got some beef with. Trustworthy? No so much.”
Jericho absently swirled a french fry in the dab of ketchup on his plate, making little loops on the porcelain as he gazed off into the distance “so there's no possibility he's going to help us. Or you, really, since he thinks I'm your hypnotized butt buddy.”
“As though you're pretty enough to be my catamite. You have glasses and I have standards, four-eyes,” Jericho grimaced a little at the mental image it conjured while Ashlan laughed “and no, to answer your question. He might very well be extremely helpful. It's just we shouldn't rely on it, and we should never, ever assume we know why.”
“Oh great, conspiracy. I was expecting something a little more...straightforward. Like, you bust into a warehouse and kill a bunch of people,” Jericho took a melancholy slurp from his milkshake “preferably, I must say, with a katana.”
“You've been watching those Blade movies again, haven't you. Well, yes. There will be a lot of that but...okay, the Underneath.”
“Stupid name.”
“No argument. Okay, so you've got all these creatures, right? The only thing they have in common is that they're individually powerful, they feed off humanity in some way, and they're not supposed to be real, right?”
“I still can't fucking believe that werewolves-”
“Jer, you gotta let the werewolves go. Just for right this moment. Alright? Plenty of times to discuss your lycanthrophobia later.”
“Are you shitting me? Lycanthropho-”
“Patience, my son! Patience, and perhaps you will learn something,” Ashlan said gravely.
“Hai, sensei.”
“Well, you've got all these powerful creatures with...somewhat common interests, right? Well, powerful as they are, they can be killed. If humanity were ever tipped off, they'd die. The casualties on the human side would probably be...unpleasant, but it could be done. Faster than you'd imagine. It's what happened to most of my folk, way back when.”
“Really? Humans went to war with the nephilim?” Jericho narrowed his eyes “when was this, exactly?”
“They called it the Third Crusade,” Ashlan replied, moodily “Fucking Templars.”
“...Templars. Like...the Knights Templar.”
“Oh yeah. They make the Freemasons look like the fucking Cub scouts,” Ashlan scoured the bottom of his empty glass, that had once contained a root beer float, and clarified “They own Norway, you know. Every square inch. Anyway, so the Underneath was formed to...I guess, regulate commerce. Much as they hate each other, all of them realize that there needs to be some kind of governing body, mostly to arbitrate disputes and ensure the continuing ignorance of the human race. Hence, the Underneath. Massive, ancient, powerful supernatural cabal.”
“And you're going to destroy it.”
“Absolutely,” Ashlan nodded vigorously, making a curt gesture to a passing waitress for the check “I want all of the nasty night creatures terrified and disenfranchised. Jer, I know this is going to sound, uh, old Ashlan to you, but...in the end, it's going to have to come down to a choice between following me, or death. Or...re-death, I suppose, if you count the vamp-”
“Please move on.”
“Pansy. Anyway, yes. Now, I know of three members of the high council on the west coast, so to speak. There's Jennifer Morgan, vampire, fairly ancient. She's set up with her coven somewhere down in Sebastapol, I think. There's Aengus McPharlan. He's...one of those weird things. A wizard, certainly. He's in San Diego, or was the last time I heard of him. I figure I'll start there.”
“And the third?”
“The third is Patrick O'Hare,” Ashlan smiled thinly “he's a vampire. And he lives here, in the city by the bay. So he's the first.”
“What about what Josephus' assertion that there's already a war going on?”
Ashlan shrugged “should I care? If it's got them distracted...”
“Sounds to me like it might have them cautious.”
“Cool,” Ashlan said “wouldn't want it to be too easy, would we?”
“Ashlan, I was wondering...I know I'm like, your mascot or whatever...”
“In lieu of being my raunchy brainwashed sodomy puppet, I suppose. But go on.”
“But what exactly is my role in this?”
Ashlan smiled, and it was his small, chilling smile “oh, come on, Jericho.”
“What?”
“I know what was living in your mind for all those weeks. I know what she left behind.”
“What?” then, “oh.”
“Yes. Oh indeed. When had you planned on telling me?”
Jericho's lips curled into what wasn't really a smile as he stared down at his plate “I kind of thought I was going crazy.”
“No, although that's certainly possible. She's gone, Jer, but if she hadn't left some stuff in your mind I'd have been very surprised. There isn't really...room for an angel in a human brain, especially not for any length of time. There have to be remnants. She had to have made room.”
“Azazel's dead, Ashlan.”
Azazel. The angel that had set up shop in his brain. The crazed, suffering thing. Jericho had mercifully few memories of that time, most of them tinged with a desperate madness that consumed everything. He tried to summon an image of how she'd looked, in his mind, when they'd thought of herself. When they'd been two riders on one horse.
All he could remember was the heart-stopping sadness of her smile, the sweetness of her voice, beneath her mad, mad eyes.
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry.
“True. She's definitely dead. I know that. You might recall that I was there,” Ashlan said, infuriatingly nonchalant “your eyes are looking at one level, and hers are looking at another. You're staring crosswise at reality. I've heard about it happening before.”
“Do you have any idea,” Jericho said quietly “how strange it is to be looking at this table, and suddenly I'm seeing the dead cells of the wood, the individual atoms spinning, the carbon chains-” his voice strange and desperate “and sometimes I think I'm seeing it's movement through time, and it's-”
Ashlan reached over the table and smacked Jericho upside the head.
“Ow!”
“I see a lot better than you squishy pink meatmonkeys,” Ashlan said “farther, and clearer, and I think I see farther into the spectrum, as well. But you see things I don't. And most of all, Jer, you think. I...uh, don't, so well. So yeah. I need you. Besides,” he said “who the hell else can warn me when I'm being a wanker?”
Jericho rubbed his head. It had been a light smack from Ashlan, but the man was so damn strong it had been like receiving a fairly solid tap with a crowbar to his temple. On the plus side, he wasn't seeing anything that made him upset.
“Besides, you're in a rare position, you know. Seeing is one step before manipulating. You could be a-”
“Oh holy damnit Christmas-”
“Wizard.”
Jericho stared at Ashlan for a long, despairing moment, and them buried his face in his arms on the table.
“Jer?”
“M'not a wizard. Not an angel, not a vampire, not a wizard,”
“Of course not, sweetheart,” Ashlan cooed, patting Jericho on the head “you don't have to master the ineffable secrets of creation if you don't want to.”
“My life used to make sense, Ashlan.”
“I know, Jer, I know,” Ashlan consoled “but on the plus side? Chicks are way hotter on this side of the looking glass. Well,” Ashlan clarified “they're mostly dead, or succubi, or occasionally have sentient, carnivorous genitalia. But hey,” he said, reaching out to grip Jericho's forearm “they've got nice tits.”
<><><>
Laurence was asleep, stretched out in a ragged armchair in a dingy living room in the apartment of a recently deceased man, when the goddamn phone started ringing.
Laurence brushed some of his black hair that had escaped it's sloppy ponytail out of his eyes with a bleary gesture. He was suddenly aware that it was two in the afternoon, he'd been sleeping a solid eighteen hours, and, since the former owner was currently in several pieces in the bathtub, having a shower was...problematic.
Damn it. He never thought these things through.
“Laurence,” he said peremptorily as he flipped open the cell phone.
“The doctor has flown into nights embrace,” A spooky female voice replied.
Laurence blinked slowly; the procedure consumed at least five seconds. He was aware, somewhere under the grime and the three days of untended BO and a truly skull-splitting hangover, that these words should mean something to him.
“The fuck,” he didn't phrase it as a question. He hauled himself out of the armchair, holding his aching head and realizing that he was starving, smelly, thirsty, and that the dead guy was really starting to stink.
“Laurence, it's me,” she replied in an altogether normal sort of voice.
“You,” he said, shambling over to the fridge.
“Your sister. Stephanie.”
“Oh hi,” He said, before he took a gulp of distinctly expired orange juice and contemplated that “so some doctor is...jogging at night or something. Cool.”
“I killed Josephus, assclown.”
“Okay,” he replied “I'm shacked up in a little apartment I found on union. Come on over.”
“Am I going to be able to take a shower?” she asked with a distinct note of suspicion in her voice.
“Uh,” he replied lamely, taking a peek through the bathroom door. Between the flies and the congealed things and the goofy expression on the stiff's face (along the lines of “Who are you, enormous man in my bathroom, and why are you carrying a vegetable peeler?”), or at least on the half of it still attached, it was unlikely she'd find the accommodations...sufficient “Sure. I mean, you could.”
“Laurence,” exasperated, she sighed “remember, we're keeping moving so they don't trace us. That means, if you have to kill someone, make it look like an accident. And stop dumping them in the goddamn bathtub.”
“It could have been an accident!” He protested “he could have slipped. In the shower. Onto, uh...” he paused, counting wounds “several machetes.”
She sighed “look, I'm going to check into a residence motel for the next few hours. We'll leave by nightfall. Meet me there, alright?” She hung up.
Great, now he was gonna have to walk somewhere. He closed his eyes and, in a second, he knew where she was, in a general sense. She was moving but in a generally northerly direction. He pulled his enormous grey-brown duster coat, a birthday gift from Stephanie that she swore up and down was an antique worn by an extra in True Grit, and walked out the door.
<><><>
He found her wrapped in a white bathrobe on the hotel bed. Nice place. Two beds, tiny kitchen, tiny bathroom. Maybe he could convince her to stay for a couple of nights; all the people whose homes he'd crashed at in the past few weeks of uncertainty had said all sorts of frankly insulting things and it was starting to threaten his self-esteem.
She didn't look up from her book, some pulpy chick thing about horse racing and fucking stable boys, just pointed towards the bathroom “Shower. Now.”
“Clothes?”
She kept the truck, most of the time. She was so much better at the subtlety thing; or at least she didn't kill people when bored, hungry, angry, horny, tired, or whimsical.
Or for stepping on his foot. God, that really climbed his prick.
“I've got your bag out.”
He showered, and felt marginally more human when he came out, wearing a clean shirt and clean jeans. It was a nice change.
“Now,” she was still absorbed in her rich-middle-aged society woman-on-stableboy-action “I bought groceries. Make lunch.”
He made grilled cheese sandwiches, cutting the crust off his own. He sliced up some pickles, lengthwise, the way she liked it. Two plates, two sandwiches, two cokes, two mini bags of cheetos.
“So you'll never guess who I saw Josephus talking to,” she said after they'd eaten. Laurence was channel surfing on the tiny television, with the sound off.
“Who?”
“Fucking Raykael. He's back in town.”
“Oh, cool.”
Stephanie closed her eyes, probably counting silently back from a hundred.
“No, it's not cool, Laurence,” she responded with exaggerated patience.
“Oh okay,” Laurence replied agreeably “you gonna fish your cheetohs?”
She tossed him what was left of her bag.
“He's here. Do you remember that town that burned down? My sources swear he was involved. He was here, talking to Josephus. This could be a problem.”
Laurence shrugged.
“Then we kill him.”
Stephanie blinked “Hmm. I guess that could work. He's got some human fucktoy with him, let's see if he knows anything first.”
“Kay.”
<><><>
"You know Ashlan, I always thought Norway belonged to the Norwegians."
"Common mistake. Poor bastards are pratically slaves."
"Huh."
“So Jer.”
“Yeah?”
“I'm gonna get you some lessons.”
“...Oh mighty christ, lessons in what.”
“Magi-Jericho, wait, stop running, damn it, my boots have heels!”
Splendid!