“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost
I’m the new messiah
Death Angel with a gun
Dangerous in my silence
Deadly to my cause.
Speak – Song by Queensrÿche –
Written by Geoff Tate / Geoffery Tate / Michael Wilton
Chapter One
Apocrypha was in the hospital again. She closed her eyes for a moment and drank in her surroundings, which were at once so familiar yet disquieting. The smell of antiseptic, the sound of the nurses’ conversation at the front desk, the echoing cries of people who had given up on using the call button, the feel of the vinyl armrests of the chair, so close to comfortable. She released her breath and opened her eyes. Her father was silent as he had been for two days, the only indication he was still with her being the rising and falling of his chest and the regular beeping of the machines monitoring his condition. She gripped the handles of the chair as the machines briefly changed their syncopation. Still, a moment later, they returned to their gentle pattern.
She rose to her feet, her hands moving across her body to check on her phone and keys. Then, she adjusted the shoulder rig that held her gun and went to the window. The doctor had said he would be there in the morning to discuss her father’s illness, but it was now almost 12:30, and she was swiftly running out of patience. The window showed nothing but the large expanse of the hospital’s parking garage, a view she had long since memorized. She turned back around as several people entered the room. Her father’s roommate had a steady stream of people moving in and out. She wondered what it would be like to have a large family; for as long as she could remember, it had only been her and her father. She sat back down in the chair and waited.
Three hours later, the doctor walked in.
“Hi, I am Doctor Studivant.” The doctor handed her his card. She looked at it briefly and slid it into her back pocket to join the ten or so other doctors’ business cards she already possessed. She shook his hand and smiled. She had long ago stopped getting upset at the doctors showing up late; it was part of her life, like being shot at.
“Is there any news about my father?”
“Well, your father’s condition is complicated. We are not just dealing with a normal disease. The influenza is manna-infused and actively disrupts any drugs we try to use. I have never seen anything like it except in journals. His reports say he spent a lot of time out of the country.”
“We traveled a lot as missionaries in the past, but we have been in the city for the last couple of years.”
“What can happen is that a person can catch the disease in an area without magic, and then once the patient enters an area with more magic present, it can feed off that power and use it to attack the carrier.”
The doctor stopped for a minute, and his face slid into a carefully constructed expression, giving away no emotions. Apocrypha knew that face. It meant bad news was coming.
“The problem is that while we can treat the symptoms he is experiencing and keep his vital functions going, we do not have the ability to fight the root cause. I am not sure of your religious views, but have you contacted The Word? They have bishops who are capable healers and might be able to purge the infection from your father.”
“My father has certain…objections to the church. Are there any other options?”
The doctor looked around the room, not meeting her eyes.
“Listen, doctor, I am open to anything that might help him.”
“I do know some people who provide alternate care, but they are not licensed and highly expensive.”
“Just give me their names and I will go from there.”
Apocrypha looked at her dad in the bed one last time and walked out of the room. After listening to the doctor’s prognosis, she knew she was going to need cash to fix this.”She needed cash for when the doctor gave her the information . Black market shamans were never cheap and rarely dependable, but her family would never go to The Word for help. She pulled out her phone and hit the first speed dial.
“Sin Eaters corporate resolution solutions. How may I help you?”
“Marie, this is Apocrypha, is Vince around?”
“He’s not in.”
“Is he not in or not taking my phone call?”
“…um…well.”
“It’s okay, Marie. I shouldn’t have put you on the spot. Just let him know I called and am open to any assignment he might have for me, dungeon crawl included.”
“I will.”
Apocrypha closed the phone, took a few steps away, then turned back, balling up her fist to smash the wall. She stopped the punch one inch from the wall. The last thing she needed was for her dad to be removed from the hospital because she got violent. She should go back into the room and hold her dad’s hand. That would be what her mom would have done, but she couldn’t take his unresponsiveness and fled out of the door. She jumped onto her motorcycle, a fully customized Lady Shiva. She revved up the engine, knowing she would have to sell it soon if she did not get a job. The bike steered itself through the streets for several hours, and eventually, she found herself in front of an old church.
Apocrypha slipped quietly into the church. She found a place at the end of the pew all the way in the back and sat down. She pulled her hooded sweatshirt closer around her head, tucking in the edges of her long white hair, which was trying to escape. It was late at night, and the building was largely empty. The cathedral had once been part of the Catholic church but had been repurposed and expanded into one of the bustling mega-parishes of the Church of the Word.
The Word, as most people referred to it now, had risen to prominence during the great conflict when man learned that he was not alone in the universe. The ten-year war had changed many things in the world, including magic returning to the globe and the reintegration of most Christian sects into the Catholic Church. The Church of the Word was an attempt to bring the Christian religion back to the forefront like it had been in the Middle Ages. The new church offered people relief from the disasters of the great conflict through traditional means, and it did not hurt that many of the heads of the church could now perform actual miracles. Gone were all the small churches of the different denominations. They were replaced by grand edifices holding thousands of believers, but within some of them were the same priests who tended the flock before everything had changed.
Father Raphael was one of them. He stood at one of the microphones, his graying hair barely covering his head as he practiced a sermon he would be giving on Sunday. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand to illustrate a point and caught sight of Apocrypha. She locked eyes with him, then looked over at the confessional booth.
Father Raphael nodded his head and gathered up his sermon materials. Apocrypha stood up and pulled the back of her sweatshirt down to make sure the gun she had stuffed in her waistband would not become visible. She walked into the confessional and kneeled. After a moment, Father Raphael opened the divider separating them.
“Greetings, Apocrypha…” Father Raphael sighed loudly. “Do I really have to call you that? It’s not who you are; it’s just some headhunter persona you wear on the streets.”
“It’s who I am now. Who I must be, and I need to always stay focused.”
“You have other options.”
“No, no, I don’t. With all due respect, Father, I came for penance, not for career counseling.”
“Fine, how long has it been since your last confession?”
“A couple months.” Apocrypha waited to be admonished, but Father Raphael merely continued the ceremony.
“Announce your sins so that you may receive absolution.”
“I miss the Latin.”
“So do I, but we give up a little ceremony to reach more people. Besides, you can’t be old enough to remember when services were in Latin.”
“My first church was what you call old school.”
“Really…” Father Raphael waited for a long moment to see if Apocrypha would share, but only silence answered him. He decided to continue with the sacrament. “What are your transgressions?”
“I have borne false witness. I have harbored lustful thoughts. I have sworn and taken the lord’s name in vain.”
“And how many have you assaulted this week while performing your job duties?”
“I don’t count that as a sin.”
“You are going to tell me what constitutes a sin?”
“Well, they were all bad people; besides, it was for their own good.”
“Please enlighten me.”
“I had to gain entry to someplace I should not have been…”
“Which you also failed to count among your sins.”
“…and if I were to go in like a ninja, then the guards are punished for not doing their job. If I smack some people around, then they get to keep their job, plus they get worker’s compensation, so it’s for the best if I assault them.”
“That might be true, but you like smacking them, which turns it into a sin.”
“Okay, I assaulted about twenty-seven people.”
“And…” Father Raphael let the silence linger for a moment, which he usually did when making a point. “That is not why you are here today. This is an unscheduled visit. I know if you had to confess every time you smacked someone, I would have to install a drive-through window.”
“I have been unfaithful to a person who I considered family, and because of my actions, my father is now going to suffer.”
“That does not sound like you. You are many things, but unfaithful is not one of them.”
“How would you know what I am really like?”
“How do you kids say it? This is not my first rodeo. I have learned a lot about judging character and, your choice of occupation notwithstanding, I believe you to be a good soul.”
“I once believed that, Father, but the choices we make drive us down bitter paths, and sometimes I can’t even remember the person I used to be. A friend labeled me as a betrayer and cut me off from their life.”
“Tell me the whole story, my child.”
“I was working. It was a simple job recovering a hard drive full of pharmaceutical data from a rival corp that had stolen it. Me and my partner Novembre went in. We overcame the resistance and penetrated the facility.”
“So, you broke in and assaulted their guards.”
“Yes. We got into the lab, and they were already starting to produce the drugs. I prepared to destroy the product while Novembre checked the data. It turned out the drug was a treatment for Achilles Syndrome. The corporation apparently had one for several months and not released it to the public. Novembre said we had a duty to give the information to clinics, but we were under contract to return the hard drive to the company.”
“Novembre does not sound like a usual headhunter.”
“She’s not. She had some trouble with the law, and I convinced Vince to put up bail for her in exchange for her doing work for us. We had history. She helped me when I first came to St. Louis. We had run the streets for a while before I got recruited for Sin-Eaters. She was never comfortable with the arrangement but signed up because she trusted me that we would not do the really dirty jobs.”
“So, what happened?”
“When she saw that I wasn’t going to go for it, she tried to cast a spell. She was a major league mage, but those things take a little time to generate. I decked her before she could. Now she hates me; Vince didn’t pay me for the gig and has been slow in giving me a new assignment. Which means I don’t have the money to pay for the care my father needs. Am I being punished by Him for my choices?”
“My child…”
Apocrypha continued before he could finish his sentence,” I am not a bad person. I have done things I had thought I never would; I do retrievals, I do protection, I do dungeon crawls, but I don’t do assassination or interrogation, and when I give my word on something, I follow through.”
“My child, I do not think you are a bad person. It is a harsh world with difficult choices. I am confused as to why your boss wants to fire you.”
“Well, he thinks I should have brought Novembre back in cuffs since he put up the bail bond money. Also, the client was concerned that all the samples made by the rival corporation might not have been destroyed. Apparently, Novembre was able to hide some in her pouch before I knocked her out. I guess the clinic she woke up at was able to replicate some of the materials and get it to people in need.”
“Novembre stuck them in her pouch?”
“She was always sneaky.”
“Apocrypha, I absolve you of your sins; for penance, I prescribe you to stop being so hard on yourself. God does hold us responsible for our choices, but I don’t believe He is punishing you. Maybe he is just trying to nudge you into a different career. I also suggest that whatever your objections, you avail yourself of our services for your father’s care, but I know you will not. I suggest you pray over your circumstances and do what you feel is God’s plan for you. Go and sin no more.”
“Thank you, Father.” Apocrypha closed her eyes; she had not believed in God’s plans for a long time. She thought of him more like an absent watchman or a man who set the chess pieces up before her but never bothered to teach her the rules. She wasn’t going to tell Father Raphael that. She also did not feel like thoughtful prayer; she felt like getting drunk or kicking somebody’s ass. She did know one place where she could probably arrange both.
Paper Phoenix ink 