The Dirty Streets of Heaven: Volume One of Bobby Dollar (17 page)

“Come, Doloriel,” he said. My supervisor was definitely worked up about something: his light was uneven, smeary as a Christmas tree behind a wet window. “They’re waiting for us.”

A moment later we were out of the maze of light known as the California Building and just as quickly out of the North American complex altogether. The Mule and I found ourselves standing before the solemn gate of a palace I’ve never seen, or at least that I didn’t remember. (Another strange thing about Heaven is how hard it is to recall details when you’re back in a mortal body: each time you visit the place it’s sort of new all over again.) The vast edifice was made of pure adamant, which is a Heavenly way of saying “slabs of diamond as big as a mountain.” It did indeed tower high into the heavenly sky, which is a beautiful but more transparent blue than that of earth, with stars showing through. The gleam of animate souls moving around inside could be seen through the substance of the tower’s walls.

“The Anaktoron of the Third Sphere,” Temuel said, and the hushed tension in his voice told me everything I didn’t already know about the seat of government for the whole of Earthly matters.

“What are we supposed to do here?” I asked, but didn’t get a reply. A moment later we were inside—clearly expected, too, since we didn’t even have to engage with the impressively terrifying angels guarding the palace door. We appeared on one side of a great stone table in a room that looked as large as Pasadena, with windows a hundred feet high letting in heaven’s pearly light. A river, an actual river, wound its way through the substance of the polished floor, bending widely
around the table, and the music of the moving water was the only sound in that massive space. A quintet of brilliant shapes hovered across from us on the far side of the table—five important angels. Five
very
important angels, in fact, two who were male (in aspect), two female, and one that was neither.

“This is your Ephorate,” Temuel said, then named the waiting angels from left to right. “Karael, Chamuel, Terentia, Anaita, and Raziel.” Some of the names were more than familiar. I had never had the slightest urge to be called in front of any of them, much less all of them at the same time. An Ephorate is a judgement council, convened to deal with one issue. Nobody knew exactly how high angels got chosen to be ephors, but it meant that this was top-level, official business. Was I really worth that much attention? Had they summoned an Ephorate because I was going to be condemned? I didn’t know, but I sure hoped not. Whatever it was, though, I had definitely been called on the carpet bigtime.

“Welcome, Doloriel,” said the awesomely beautiful, merciful, and loving coruscation of light that was Terentia. She was all colors submerged in a brilliant sheen of whiteness and seemed to be the leader of this little gathering. “God loves you.”

I bowed my head. It was impossible to be in a room full of so much angelic fire and not feel overwhelmed, like a child in the presence of respected elders. It was even more impossible not to be afraid. “Thank you, Mistress.”

“We are concerned about events on Earth,” said the astonishing youth named Karael in his armor of glittering electrum, and just the touch of his mighty thoughts almost made me swoon. His colors were darker than Terentia’s, ripples of black and red gleaming through his brightness like stones in the bed of a fast-flowing stream. Karael was known all over the Celestial City. He was one of the militant angels, a veteran of the Fall, and in person he oozed power. I couldn’t help wondering what complicated heavenly protocols made him take a place behind Terentia in this gathering. “We wish to hear everything that you know about the soul known as Edward Lynes Walker.”

Hearing that, I felt a tiny bit less worried: Apparently this Ephorate was investigating the Walker case, not me personally. It wouldn’t save me if they decided I’d screwed up, of course, but at least the focus wasn’t just on Bobby D.

I told them everything I knew. Well, not every single dubious thought that had ever kindled in my secret heart, but everything else—Fatback, The Water Hole, Walker’s granddaughter and her idiot boyfriend, even my meeting with the Countess of Cold Hands. I won’t go so far as to say the higher angels can read minds, but I will say this: It would have taken a stronger soul than your narrator to hold anything important back while facing a group of them gathered as sworn ephors. I was damned frightened. You would be too if your immortal soul was literally on the line.

“Why would you go out of your way to speak to this Countess?” Anaita asked when I finished. “Let alone risk an incident of the sort you nearly caused?” She seemed the sweetest of all those gathered, her voice that of an innocent young girl, her appearance as delicate as a rainbow just before it fades into the sunlight, but I didn’t kid myself—“sweet” is relative when you’re talking about a creature who was probably spearing demons right and left in the last great war against Satan’s hordes. “Why would you put yourself in such jeopardy, Angel Doloriel? You know the creatures of The Adversary mean you nothing but harm.”

“Even a born liar can be useful, Mistress, if only by paying attention to the lies he chooses to tell and the way he tells them,” I said politely. “I wanted more information. I was upset on behalf of Heaven and disturbed that such a thing as the missing soul could happen.”

“This smacks to me of arrogance and pride.” Karael’s voice rumbled like a distant storm. It might have been hard to imagine Anaita smiting demons, but it was pretty obvious Karael probably smote a dozen or so before breakfast every morning, just by way of an eye opener. “You did not seek the counsel of your superiors. You did not address your concerns to Archangel Temuel or any others.”

“And, now, because of your well-known stubbornness, you have become entangled with one of Heaven’s dire foes.” Chamuel’s light was pearly and there were times when I could almost make out a manlike shape beneath the radiance, like something seen in a mist. “Someone has spoken your name to a dreadful primordial spirit—a
ghallu
, a slave of Old Night, which has put both your bodily raiment and your immortal soul, Heaven’s generous gifts, in danger.”

Which meant I finally knew what was after me, or at least its name, but I didn’t like the “soul in danger” part very much at all.

“We are also not pleased that you changed your earthly dwelling without consulting any of those who watch over you,” said Raziel, the sexless one who had been silent so far. Raziel was dark, if an angel can be dark, its light old and ruddy like a sunset. “You are a soldier of Heaven. To act without consultation suggests you do not trust the love that the Highest and the ministers of the Highest have for you.”

“That troubles me, also, Doloriel,” said Terentia. “Se raises a question I would have asked myself.” (Heavenly speech has a way of talking about the angels that are neither male or female without reducing them to “it”.) “I would hear you answer herm.”

This was perhaps my most dangerous moment in front of the Ephorate, because they were absolutely right, of course. I don’t trust Heaven—or at least not everyone in Heaven—to have my best interests in mind. I had developed this habit over years of petty disappointments and irritations, but sometimes it seemed to run deeper even than that, as much a part of me as the shell on a turtle or the claws on a badger.

“I…I was confused, Masters,” I said. “That’s the only defense I can offer. Caught up in time and earthly things, I judged that there would be a better moment to share everything with Heaven—as we’re doing now.” It was lame but it was all I could come up with, and at least there was a little truth to it. “If I’ve disappointed or sinned against the Highest, I beg pardon.”

“It is presumptuous to think that you might disappoint He who made you,” said Karael. “Did the whore of Hell say anything else to you—this Countess of Cold Hands?” He spoke her name with such withering distaste I had no doubt that if she stood helpless before him, then he would have blasted her to cinders without an instant’s hesitation. “Are you certain you have told us everything?”

Karael scared me. Just by standing there so bold and beautiful he made me feel like a miserable, dirty little sinner, and at that moment I couldn’t imagine telling him anything but the truth. “I have, Master. Did I do wrong?”

A pause fell over the gathering. I could dimly sense currents of thought running between the five of them but it was communication far too lofty and swift for me to understand.

Chamuel broke the silence. “Archangel Temuel, what have you to say? After all, Doloriel is your charge.” Chamuel hadn’t spoken much
more than Raziel. His inner fires were banked low, at least to my senses, but he gave the impression of depth and solemnity: to gaze on his Heavenly form was to sense something vast and awesome lurking just out of sight.

The Mule took a moment to compose his thoughts, or at least that’s what I hoped he was doing, since it was also possible my personal archangel was getting ready to throw me under the bus. “I am honored the Holy Ephorate desires my opinion,” he said at last. “Doloriel’s tradecraft is good. It is true that he can be one of the more headstrong spirits, but as you know, that is often the case with Heaven’s servants who exist in time on the plane of Earthly existence. And as we all know, there are occasions when such traits are useful. A more composed spirit might have succumbed to the hunting demon.”

“A more composed spirit might not have been pursued in the first place,” pointed out Terentia—a touch unfairly, I thought, but of course I didn’t say so.

“Then perhaps it is time we gathered Doloriel back into the heart of the fold,” said Anaita. “Perhaps it would be a kindness to let him return to the Celestial City and exult in the closeness of the Highest as we all do.”

For a moment, listening to her sweet Bo Peep voice, I really wanted that, despite everything that makes me who I am.
Yes,
I thought,
bring me back to Heaven for good. Let me live here and sink into the glow and the warmth and the certainty. No more questions, no more responsibilities, no more fear of failing a needy soul
…It truly seemed the nicest thing that could happen. Only for that moment, though. Then I got over it.

I said, “You’re too kind, Mistress,” but suddenly it all seemed different again, and I wanted nothing else in all of Creation except to get out of that ineffably beautiful, blissful place and back to stinking, dangerous, unpredictable Earth. Because that was where my work was, not up here in the shining streets and tranquil gardens of Paradise.

Perhaps the Ephorate sensed my thought in some way. All five went quiet, and the fire of their beings grew lower, or seemed to, which I guess meant they had turned away from me to speak among themselves once more. I looked over to Temuel, but he too had retreated into himself, his essential light turned down as if it had a rheostat. It seemed like I waited a very long time in that timeless place before anyone spoke again.

“Go back, Doloriel, and do what the Highest has given you to do,” said the crystalline blaze of hope and solace that was Terentia. Relief washed through me—something a little less vivid than joy but still very real. “Know, however, that your fitness for that task has been questioned and that our judgement is not yet complete. Walk with caution. God loves you.”

I bowed my head as the five angels reached out and touched me, one after another, little bursts of joyful fire, and then they were gone, as was the Anaktoron itself. Temuel and I abruptly found ourselves in the middle of the great thoroughfare known as the Singing Way with the sweetly murmuring crowds of Heaven eddying around us like phantoms of light and fog.

“You’ve had a close brush, Doloriel,” Temuel said. “I don’t think a second gathering of ephors will be so lenient, so try to fly a little closer to the ground from now on, will you?”

I didn’t really have anything to say to that, but I mumbled some promise. Now that the danger of my personal dissolution was over, at least for the present, I was even more unnerved to realize how close to it I had been.

“One thing,” Temuel said. “I didn’t hear everything that passed between you and the Ephorate. Did they ask you about the Magians? Or about the name Kephas?”

Both of these were completely new to me, and I wondered if Temuel was taking the good cop role in some complicated process, working on me after the council had softened me up. “Never heard of either of them,” I told him truthfully.

“Ah,” he said. “No matter. Just some speculation of my own. You may disregard it.”

This was all making me extremely nervous. “What’s this all about? And why are they picking on me? I didn’t do anything to cause any of this.”

Temuel’s light warmed to soothing sunrise pinks and yellows, the archangelic version of someone putting a comradely hand on your shoulder. “No, Doloriel, but sometimes when things go very wrong and even the highest are frightened, innocence is not enough for salvation.”

I let this cryptic phrase echo for a moment. I was feeling a chill again, and now I really did want to get away as quickly as possible—to
escape the place that every living soul on earth wanted to reach. “Are they
really
that frightened up here? Just because one soul wasn’t where it was supposed to be?”

For a moment the Mule’s pearly light guttered like a flame in a high wind. It took me a moment to realize he was surprised. “Of course,” he said. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Don’t know what?”

He spoke slowly, like a grownup breaking bad news to a child. “The soul known on Earth as Edward Walker was only the first to vanish, Doloriel. Others have gone missing since then. More than a few.” His voice sank to a conspiratorial whisper. “So, yes—they really are that frightened up here.”