Spires of Infinity

Spires of Infinity

By Eric Allen

Prologue

Of all the ways to die, Gabriel never expected to meet his end as a gory mess

splattered across the front of a Greyhound bus. Of course, no one really
plans
on dying like that, except for a few very disturbed individuals. Most times, it just sort of happens.

One moment Evanescence is blaring in your ears, and you’re thinking of the hot paralegal wearing an outfit millimeters away from being immodestly unprofessional, who let you rip her CD . . . biblically. And the next you’re flying through the air in bloody pieces.

Roadkill, if you will.

“Son of a—” was all he had time to utter before being hit by that nonstop

Greyhound express straight to the afterlife.

He would have liked to say that his life flashed before his eyes in an endearing montage with some sort of soft, yet powerful music playing in the background, tugging on the audience’s heartstrings. Instead, everything went blank.

And that was the end of it, dead on impact. Gabriel Reeve died a bloody and

meaningless death. Fade to black. Roll credits.

Chapter 1: A Second Chance

That
should
have been the end of it, but it wasn’t.

Spinning end over end, Gabriel found himself hurtling downward through cold,

wet mist. The air whipped his expensive haircut and even more expensive suit behind him with a sound like a flag in a windstorm. Fighting against the pressure of the air rushing by, Gabriel found himself unable to breathe. He couldn’t even scream.

Crazy thoughts rushed through his mind. He was reasonably sure that he’d just died. People didn’t normally walk away from pedestrian versus gigantic metal behemoth.

Only, he was going down, not up. According to his childhood preacher, Heaven was in the other direction. A
bad
sign.

Bursting out into open air, Gabriel found himself far above a lake of picture

perfect blue. Near the shore was a humble house atop a hill with a massive tree behind it.

Carpeting the rolling green hills beyond was an expansive cemetery. He could make out a man dressed all in black fishing at the shore.

Gabriel had been sky diving once before, and began to remember the classes

before the actual event. When free falling, the best way to even out and slow his fall was to spread his limbs wide to make as much drag on the air as possible. Stretching out his arms and legs, he felt his fall both stabilize and slow enough for him to finally draw a breath.

Greedily he drew in huge, deep gasps of air. When he no longer felt lightheaded, he did what any sane individual might do in his predicament. He screamed bloody murder the rest of the way down. Just before hitting the surface he pulled into a tight ball to keep from being splattered for the second time in as many minutes.

Slowing his fall just before he plunged into the icy water, Gabriel felt an unseen force take hold of him. Freezing cold shocked him so badly that he was unable to move.

He drifted up to the surface and when his head finally broke through he began coughing and spluttering. At last he overcame his shock and began treading water.

Looking toward the shore, Gabriel saw the man in black watching him with mild

amusement.

“A little help here,” Gabriel called.

The man shrugged before casting his fishing line again. “You’re fine. Just make your way slowly toward the shore. You’re close to the shallows.”

Gabriel began swimming toward the shore. It was not long before his feet

brushed the bottom. He winced as his handmade Italian shoes sank into gooey mud.

When he reached the shore, he bent over with his hands on his knees, panting heavily.

The fishing reel clicked with a steady rhythm as he cleared his nose and lungs of water.

Glancing up at the overcast sky, Gabriel wondered how he’d survived the fall.

More to the point, he was standing in a
completely
ruined suit that cost more than some people made in a year, and he was reasonably sure that a bus had just killed him. What in the hell was going on?

Looking the man in black up and down, Gabriel saw that he was tall and ruggedly handsome. Several days of stubble darkened his face, and his straight black hair was held back with a frayed red cord tied at the nape of his neck. Weariness seemed to loom over him like one of those little rain clouds that followed cartoon characters around. His most striking feature was his purple eyes.

“This may sound
really
crazy,” Gabriel said. “But, uh, I just died.”

“That you did,” the man in black looked up from his fishing pole to fix Gabriel with a strange stare. “I’ll spare you the details, but I have been given authority to sort through the people on their way to the afterlife for those that may be of use to me.”

Gabriel stared at the man. “Did you escape from a mental institution? Wait.

You’re not God, are you?”

“No. I am the Northern Sage, lord of time and space. To put it in terms you’d understand, I’m something more like middle management. Even God doesn’t have time to do everything, after all. Right now we are existing outside of what you consider to be normal time and space. One day every person must pass through here on his way to the afterlife, but I have the power to take the ones that interest me. I have a job for you, and you just might have what it takes to get it done.”

At those words, the voice of Joseph Reeve rose up from the dark depths of

Gabriel’s consciousness, where the horrors of his childhood stagnated and festered. The impulsive desire to do everything that the Sage said struck him, if only to prove his worthless father wrong.

“So you’re the one that dropped me in that overgrown puddle,” Gabriel pushed

the voice in his head away. “Do you have
any
idea how much this suit cost!”

“Do you have any idea how little I care? I could send you to your reward in the afterlife if you prefer. But between you and me, you’re probably not going to like that very much unless, of course, you’ve got a fetish for fire and brimstone.”

Gabriel clamped his jaw shut to prevent the string of profanity that was on its way out. In his opinion there were two types of curse words, the lesser ones and the greater ones. The greater swears included such four letter originals as the F word and the S

word. The lesser group included everything else. He reserved the greater group for situations like the one he found himself in now. He also liked to know the origins of his curses. It made him feel more sophisticated in using them. For instance, the F word was short for Fornication Under Consent of the King.

“All right then,” the Sage continued. “You’re a slimy, self-centered, sociopathic, unchaste, vain, champion of evil. Was that what you sought when you set out to become a lawyer? As things stand you’re bound for a very warm locale. However, I am unable to leave this place, and there is something that needs to be done outside. I must, unfortunately, work through proxies like you. Here’s the deal. You go where I say, and do as I say, and maybe, perhaps, you’ll score enough points with the big guy that you’ll earn your redemption and avoid going to hell. What do you say Gabriel Reeve? Will you serve me with the chance at redeeming your soul?”

“Wait,” Gabriel reached into his sodden pockets. “I have money. I have
lots
of money. I can pay you to let me go back to my life, without the bus of course.”

“A bribe,” the Sage laughed. “Look around, genius. Does this look like Earth to you?”

Gabriel did look around. The sky, where it could be seen through the clouds, was a strange purple color that never existed on Earth, and there were at least three moons.

The clouds could have hidden any number more.

“I have everything I need to live comfortably, and your money is completely

worthless here. I’m giving you something that few people ever receive, a second chance.

A chance to redeem yourself. Take it or leave it. There’s no negotiation of the terms.

I’m not the one that lived his life completely for himself, nailing everything female with a heartbeat, and championing the most deplorable of causes. Man up, or I’ll find someone else who will.”

“What do I have to do,” Gabriel asked.

“Meet with a woman named Millie Farseer. She knows you’re coming, and will

come to meet you.”

“And then what?”

“Do what she tells you to do.”

“Okay, got it,” Gabriel nodded. “Meet Millie, and do what she tells me to. That’s it? That’ll score me some points with the almighty and I won’t go to hell?”

“You can lead a horse to water,” the Sage muttered under his breath just loud

enough to be heard. “You’re really an idiot, aren’t you? It’s not the destination that redeems a man. Ah, screw it, explaining to someone with your obvious lack of

intelligence would be a waste of my time. Maybe you’ll figure it out somewhere along the way. I will tell you this much. You must prove to the powers that be that you have it in you to be redeemed. You need to show the big guy that you
deserve
this second chance. If you screw it up a second time, your everlasting torment in the afterlife will be doubly bad. You can’t buy redemption with a few insincere words and half-hearted acts.

Your whole heart, mind and soul must be in it. Selfless acts of kindness or sacrifice might be a good place to start. Understand?”

Gabriel didn’t. He didn’t understand anything. He was dead, but somehow he

was not, and now he had to go run errands for god’s middle-freaking-management in order to work his way out of hell? What had he done to deserve hell anyway! He didn’t understand, but he nodded anyway, and found himself falling once more. It was a much shorter fall this time, and ended with a painful impact on dusty ground, where he lay for some time, feeling as though a bus had just hit him.

Freezing cold bit into him, breaking through the pain of Gabriel’s fall. Pushing himself to his feet, he found that he was no longer wearing his suit, nor was he still wet.

Dual gunbelts crossed his waist, weighing down heavily. The pistols in the holsters looked more like cannons than handguns. The shells lining the belts were the size of his thumbs.

A huge knife was stuffed behind one of the belts. Drawing it, he examined the gleaming black blade, which looked like plastic, but it was far too heavy to be anything but metal. Sliding it back into the sheath, he took stock of his clothing.

He looked like he’d walked straight out of a Clint Eastwood movie. Leather

chaps covered his faded blue jeans, and a heavy leather vest hid most of a faded black shirt. Over everything was a heavy duster coat. His legs were slightly bowed, and he couldn’t straighten them no matter how hard he tried. Reaching for the black cowboy hat at his feet, he dusted it off before placing it on his head.

His hair was several inches longer than it had been mere minutes before, and his black leather gloves rasped against thick stubble on his face. He would
never
allow his appearance to degrade so much! His looks were high on his list of priorities. It was so much easier to convince twelve people that a murderer, who was obviously guilty as sin, was completely innocent when you were polished up prettily.

Shocked, Gabriel realized that the face he was rubbing with his hands was not his own. His nose was different, and his cheekbones. His jaw seemed a bit wider. He knew his face. He put a lot of love and care into maintaining it. The face he was trying to massage cold and pain out of was not his. He needed a mirror! He had to see what that damned Northern Sage had done to him!

There was a horse nearby and he ran toward it, skidding to a stop when he

realized it wasn’t exactly a horse.

“Whoa,” Gabriel muttered.

The animal had the body of a horse, but with paws rather than hooves, and a more catlike tail. It looked up from grazing on the odd purple grass that sporadically patched the ground with a feline head as he approached. There were saddlebags and a saddle on its back. He cautiously placed a hand on the animal’s flank, expecting it to suddenly turn violent as seemingly docile beasties
always
did in alien movies.

When the strange horse-cat paid him no mind he breathed a little more easily and reached into the saddlebags, rummaging around until he found a small mirror. Holding it up, it took him a few seconds to work up the courage to look. When he did, the foggy, somewhat distorted glass reflected someone else. It
was
his face, but at the same time, it was not.

His skin had been smoother than a baby’s ass thanks to biweekly spa treatments.

Now it was leathery and callused. You could drive a Greyhound bus through some of his pores. Dark stubble far thicker than anything he’d ever been able to grow before hid his cheeks and jaw. His black hair seemed to have a lot more curl to it. His deep blue eyes had faded almost to gray. It was his face, but at the same time, it was the face of a man who had spent many long years exposed to the elements. It was almost as though someone had pieced his face together from memory and gotten a few small details wrong.