JohnHartness.com

I sensed him before I saw him. I always do. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, playing a little blackjack when I felt his presence over my right shoulder.

“Hi Lucky.”

“Big A.”

I hate that. He always has to go there right away. And he’s supposed to be subtle. Ass.

“Been here long?”

“A while. Playing a little cards. You?”

“Well, you know me, Big A, I’ve got a place here. I love this town. Everything about it just calls to me.”

“Yeah, I think I heard that somewhere.”

I finally glanced over and gave him the satisfaction of a look. A new look for him this time around – red riding leathers, no helmet of course, black boots, black hair tied back in a ponytail and sunglasses. The sunglasses were kind of a given, I suppose.

“Nice outfit. You look like one of the cavemen in that insurance commercial.”

“Thanks. You, as always, look well put-together.”

I’ve never been sure how to take his compliments, and I wasn’t in Las Vegas to think, so I just went for face value.
“Thanks.”

For once he didn’t press the issue and stopped talking. So we sat there playing blackjack for a while. Me playing green chips, him moving quickly from green to black to purple all the way up to the yellow $1,000 chips in a couple of short hours. He lost just enough hands to keep from getting thrown out, but not quite enough to keep the eye in the sky from getting suspicious.

“A, looks like we’ve got company.”

“You got a mouse in your pocket? I’m not the one that’s been sitting here counting cards for three hours.”

“Yeah, but I’m not the one who took twenty grand in chips out of my safety deposit box this morning. Chips, I might add, that came from a casino that was exploded a couple decades ago.”

I hate that he always has more information than he rightfully should. I suppose, to give him his due, that he does have people literally everywhere in this town. But it’s still annoying. I’ll grant that visiting a box that hasn’t been touched in 25 years might raise an eyebrow or two, but I’m still blaming the attention of the lummox in the off-the-rack suit on my unwanted companion’s unabashed card-counting. Either way, the brutes in suits might have had a few questions for me that I wasn’t fully prepared to answer at exactly that moment, so I looked at my old pal Lucky.

“Keys?”

“Might I suggest California? I hear Sacremento’s nice this time of year. My bike’s out front. You’ll know which one. You owe me one.”

“We’re not even. This doesn’t even come close. Nowhere near to close.”

“You really know how to wound a guy, Big A.”

“Bite me.” With that, I grabbed Lucky’s keys from the table, tossed a green chip to the dealer and headed for the cage. I spotted another security lummox between me and the cage, so I decided on discretion as the better part of valor, tossed a couple grand in chips into the air and used the resulting pandemonium to make my less-than-subtle way to the exit. As I glanced back towards the table where I had left Lucky, I noticed that he and the two guards were having a beer and yukking it up like long-lost frat brothers. Which for all I knew, they might have been.

He was right, I knew which bike was his right away. It was big, loud ostentatious black thing with flames painted on the gas tank. Subtle. I swear, the thing looked hungry. I put the key in the ignition (apple key chain? Really?) and headed off down the highway, turning immediately to the East as I recalled Lucky’s nod toward California.

Okay, so looking back on it, maybe opening a 25-year-old lock box wasn’t exactly the most under the radar move I could have made. I know that people take out safety deposit boxes in this town all the time. But not all of them pay the rent on those boxes with automatic debits from numbered accounts. And I just had the bad luck to run into the same security guard that rented me the box the first time, on his first day of the job 25 years ago. Little bugger had a good memory, that’s for sure. And I guess I hadn’t changed much since then. Ok, make that not at all. So it might have been my fault we got spied after all. But I’m still blaming Lucky. After all, he’s been taking the blame for things for a couple millennia now, so what’s one more little incident?
Maybe I should back up a little. My name is Adam. No, I don’t have a last name. Yes, that Adam. No really, you can feel for the rib if you like. But it’s better if you don’t. I’m ticklish.

I rode a few hours east until I got just outside of Flagstaff, and pulled over to watch the sunset and think. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Lucky, or Lucypher if we wanted to be particularly precise about it, to show up unannounced, but this time I hadn’t seen him in years. I wondered what he wanted. He always wants something, and he usually gets it. And it’s usually not good either to be the one who gives it to him or to be between him and his goals. It’s better to sit on the sidelines and watch the carnage, hoping not to get too much splatter on your shoes.

That’s what I’ve done for years – watch. I’ve watched people grow from just a couple to billions of huddled masses, yearning for something or another. I’ve watched people kill each other over pennies in the street and I’ve watched people give their last breath to help a stranger. And through it all, ever since the Garden, Lucky has been a constant. Always around, always goading something into action. I never know why or what he wants, I just watch.

But this little interaction was different. This was the first time in millennia that Lucky had been goading me. He wanted me to do something, and whatever it was, I didn’t want to do it. The last time I did anything he wanted it didn’t turn out so well for me, so I’ve tried to steer clear of his maneuvering since then. So I sat, and the sun set, and I watched the shadows lengthen and the desert turn from a superheated wasteland to a patchwork canvas of light and rolling shadows. I like sunsets, they carry the memory of the day before and the promise of the day to come.

Eve always preferred sunrises. She said they were more anticipatory, like a held breath before the day explodes like a sneeze all over the world.

Yeah, Eve’s real too. It all is, except for the bit about Lucky being a serpent. That was a little bit of poetic license on Mo’s part, but he was always creeped out by snakes and I think the whole serpent thing was just a little underhanded way of making sure people overall didn’t like snakes any more than he did. Really, Lucky was our friend, and was in the Garden with us from the very beginning. Several of the archangels used to come visit in the Garden: Gabriel, Airel, Jophiel and Metatron were there the most, but after we left the Garden we saw more of Azrael than we really wanted to.

So yeah, Lucky was around the Garden. And we really did all live there with all the beasts in perfect harmony and everybody lived forever and nobody died and it was all sweetness and light. But that can’t sustain. It’s not a natural state of being, and Dad understood that. And he gave Lucky the hardest job, because Lucky was his favored child, and he knew that Lucky would do it without question, no matter what it would cost him in the long run.

So Lucky gave Eve the apple, and she shared it with me, and we ate it, and got kicked out of the Garden, and headed off to the land of Nod and all that stuff you’ve read about since you were a tadpole. And it almost killed Lucky, not just to be banished from Dad’s side forever, but to have to trick Eve and me, who were his best friends, into doing something that would make our lives pretty awful for a very long time. After a long time and more than a few beers, I managed to forgive Lucky and we reached an understanding of sorts, but Eve never let it go. Leaving the Garden broke something inside her that never healed, even after all these years.

Oh, I guess by now you’ve figured out that we’re immortal. Gaining knowledge of good and evil didn’t do anything to change the whole living forever thing we started off with, even though we didn’t pass that on completely to our children. They lived a good long time, don’t get me wrong. And I watched more than one century turn with my kids, but eventually they grew old and died. And I watched more and more centuries turn without them. And no matter what my buddy Clive Lewis wrote about all men being “sons of Adam,” it didn’t change the fact that my direct sons and daughters were gone.

So I sat on a little hill just west of Flagstaff watching the sun go down and trying to figure out what Lucky was looking for. What did he want me to do? He had suggested California, so of course I headed East, but is that what he wanted me to do in the first place? Lucky was the original trickster, so it wasn’t out of the question for him to double- or even triple-think me into going exactly where he wanted me to go.

As I sat there pondering, the first star of the night came winking into view in the east, and I could feel my answer. East. I had to go East, and I had to find Eve. This was gonna get ugly.

It had been a few centuries since I last saw Eve, and that didn’t end well. Not for us, not for anyone watching, and not for the residents of the surrounding countryside. I found her in London at the turn of the century, the 17th century that is, playing ratcatcher in the sewers just to see if she could catch plague. Eve liked to live on the edge, and ever since that whole tossed out of the Garden thing, she had been trying to die. This was her third go-round with the Plague, and it wasn’t working out any better than the last two. I’d heard of the mad ratwoman all the way up in my home in Austria, and I knew right away who it was. I also pretty much knew the outcome of our meeting before it happened, but that didn’t stop me from going after her. Again.
I found her outside the Rose, one of the new style of theatres. She looked like hell. Eve had never been classically beautiful, but over time she came to revel in filth, as if she could hide the mark on her soul if she layered enough dirt on her body. This time around her hair was long, hanging nearly to her waist, and matted with things I’d rather not describe. Never a tall woman, she had affected a hunched-over posture and a limp that I suppose made her less obtrusive in her current surroundings. That’s one thing about the both of us: unless we go to some lengths to hide it, after a time it becomes obvious to anyone around that we’re not exactly normal. We looked the same, after all we are the original people, but there’s something just a touch off. We have no clearly-defined ethnicity, because there wasn’t such a thing when we were Made. And there’s something in our eyes, something about the weight of a few dozen centuries that’s impossible to hide. So we don’t look to many people in the eye. It’s nothing personal, too much eye contact just leads to questions most people aren’t interested in the honest answers to.

Eve had gone to remarkable lengths to hide herself, dressing in the filthiest rags she could find and apparently taking a daily bath in the sewers for good measure. Her face was char-woman dirty, and a cloud of stench hovered around her like a cloud of hungry flies. Come to think of it, there was more than one fly hovering around as well. She was, of all ridiculous things, sitting on the steps of the theatre playing a recorder.

“This isn’t Hamlin.” I said as I stopped just outside ground zero of her odor.

“Bugger off.”

“Good to see you, too.”

“I wasn’t jokin’. Bugger off. I’m spending quality time with my friends. And they don’t like you.” That’s when I realized that maybe Eve had spent a little time with that Pied Piper fellow after all, since there were a dozen or so rats starting to gather. Most of them were the size of large mice, but a couple of them looked like small cats, and one reached nearly as high as my knee when it reared up on its back legs and hissed a warning at me. If it had been a few hundred years later a witty remark about Mrs. Frisby might have come to mind, but at the time I just kicked it in the guts.

“Why’d you do that?” Eve screeched as her “friends” scattered back into the shadows and sewers.

“I don’t like vermin.”

“Really? And here I thought rats of a feather and all that.”

“Eve, what are you doing here?”

“Don’t call me that! And I’m doing what I please. Just like you, doing what you please, in your little chalet or whatever you call it up on your little mountain. Why’d you come down here bothering me anyway?”

“I heard about a crazy ratwoman who goes into the deepest plague pits and comes out none the worse for wear. I thought it might be you. I guess they missed that “worse for wear” part, but I did find you.”

“Like you been lookin’.”

“I have, Eve. I looked for you for thirty years after you left me in China.”

“Well now you found me. What. Do. You. Want?” She spoke slowly, precisely, as though to a mental deficient. Which, I suppose, in her eyes, I was.

“You. Me. Us. I want us back.”

“There hasn’t been an us in a thousand years, and won’t be an us for another thousand. Now bugger off and leave me to my friends!” With that, she played another shrill tune on her pipe, and rats streamed out of the sewers at us like a roiling tide of furry, smelly water. I couldn’t hold my footing and was swept along with the rats out of town and across the bridge. All I needed was the Ramones in the background and it would have been classic crowd-surfing. Except I was rat-surfing. And the Ramones wouldn’t be born for another couple centuries.

So there I stood, on the outskirts of London, watching helplessly as thousands of city rats took a holiday from London, clearing out most of the Plague from the town, but with the unfortunate side result of spreading it throughout the English countryside. I suppose I should have felt guilty, but they were going to die anyway, so did it really matter that much when? Sometimes taking the long view of things can make one seem a little heartless.

So I headed back up my mountain and spent the better part of three decades learning to ski and paint landscapes in Austria. I lost track of Eve again, and when I hopped a ship to the New Country I figured she’d either find me someday, or she wouldn’t. Again, that whole “long view” thing. But now, I knew I had to find her, even though I didn’t know why. I just knew that if we weren’t together the next time I ran into Lucky, it was going to be very bad for us. And if I didn’t classify what happened to us the first time we both hung out with Lucky as “very bad,” even I was a little nervous about what this time might bring.

I crashed in Flagstaff for the night, and rolled on east the next morning. I’ve always been a morning person. It was always my favorite time in the Garden, and nothing had happened in a few thousand years to change that. There’s something fresh about a morning, when the promise of the day hasn’t been spoiled by having to deal with other people yet, that always makes me look at the world with a little lighter eye. So I rolled east. I knew I’d eventually start to feel where Eve was. We could all always find each other. Me, Lucky, Eve, Cain. Yeah, Cain’s still around, too. I tend to steer pretty clear of my firstborn son, not because I haven’t gotten over what he did to Abel, but because he hasn’t. He and Eve stayed in better contact with each other than with me. I guess they feel like they both carry a burden I can’t understand. Families are like that, I suppose.

But I had no hint of Eve, Cain or Lucky this time. I headed East because I’d been living in the West for so many years I assumed Eve would be somewhere far away. I last knew she was in America a dozen or so years ago. I was in Los Angeles and I felt her. She never made contact, and I knew better than to try. I figured she’d probably stayed pretty close to the East coast since then. It’s also got more big cities, and Eve’s done a pretty good job of losing herself among people for a while.

I love America, with its big wide expanses of country. Europe has nothing like Texas, where the whole world seems flat. There are some parts of Africa that are similar, but yet not. America has a vibration all its own, a youthfulness that carries across even though the land is no older or younger than any other piece of dirt. You see, a country tends to take on the characteristics of its inhabitants, and Americans are quick, vibrant types. Always impatient, like kids. So the country feels young. I like it, it makes me feel like I’m only 2,000 again.

I got hungry around Amarillo, and I swung into a little diner I’d visited once acouple dozen years before. The same tinny bell rang as I walked through the door, and the same (or more likely so similar to be interchangeable) old men looked up from their places at the counter as I strolled in. My boots clicked across the same checkerboard linoleum, tracks worn colorless near the door and in front of the cash register. I nodded to the cook behind the counter as I crossed the room, knocking the road dust off my jeans as I made my way to a booth near the jukebox.

It was late afternoon, and the sunlight streaming through the dirty windows had taken on a golden-amber tone as that big ball settled low in the sky, just starting to tinge the horizon with fire. I’d just turned to slide my jeans across the cracked red pleather seat when I heard a gasp and a crash of broken crockery.

“Shit, Myra! What the hell’s the matter with you?” the cook yelled at the woman who stood, stock still in the middle of the floor with coffee spilling all over her feet. I took one look at her and my heart sank a little. I knew her. Biblically, as they say. And if anyone’s qualified to use term, it would be me. She was older, of course. The blonde hair that once spun gold out of that afternoon sunlight was now a dishwater bland, with more than a few streaks of grey shot through it. The little crinkles that used to appear in the corners of her mouth were permanent lines now, and she didn’t seem to float across the floor like she used to.

She was a little heavier than when we last met, but not fat. Just a woman’s body, not a girl any longer. Not a girl for a long time, I suppose. But her eyes were the same. The eyes never really change. As long as there’s still a person in there, the eyes are the same.

And her eyes held more than just a spark of recognition, they held an entire bonfire. They burned into me with 25 years worth of questions, answers, speculations, loss, love, forgiveness and more than a little pain. But oddly enough, not a hint of regret. I was glad for that. I didn’t want her to regret anything about our time together. I certainly didn’t. Of course, I knew it was fleeting at the time, and she obviously had waited for me to come back. And when I did, it was two decades later. And I still looked exactly like I did the day I left that little diner, intending never to return in her lifetime.

That’s the key to being who we are, to living like we do. It’s not to refuse to make connections. We’re human, and we need those connections as much as anyone. It’s to know when the connection has to be severed, for both our sakes. It would be impossible to live with someone who doesn’t age without growing to resent them as your youthful vigor fades. Love can turn to hate very easily, and there’s nothing worse than being hated by someone who once loved you like you were the only two people on earth.
Just trust me on that one. I’ve got a little perspective.

It’s just as hard on us, giving our hearts to someone we know will die in what is just an eyeblink to our lifespan. So we hold back. We can’t give ourselves completely to a mortal, and that’s the kind of thing that perceptive lovers pick up on. And after a few millennium walking the earth, you’re not interested in dating rocks anymore, so you’re going to have perceptive lovers.
So we make brief, incredibly deep, incredibly vital, soul-touching connections. And then we sever them before it gets somebody really hurt. We hope. Sometimes we miss, and the person we leave is in stasis for the rest of their lives hoping we’ll come back.

Dad, I hope that’s not what happened to Myra.

So I sat there, and I looked back at her, and she looked at me, and I looked at her, and after a minute she seemed to convince herself that I wasn’t really me. That’s the logical choice, after all. I mean, who goes through 25 years and still looks like they’re in their twenties? Other than Dick Clark, and I know his secrets, so don’t sweat it. After an eternity that couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds, Myra ran to the back, where I heard her ask someone back there to “cover for me.” Seconds later I heard the screen door out the back of the kitchen slam, and then I could just barely hear the sound of someone sitting on the back stoop, striking a match, and taking the first long drag off a cigarette.

“Boy, mister, you got her wound up tighter than a clock spring at midnight. What’s the deal? She know you? Cause I’ve never seen you before, and I’d remember you.” The voice came from my elbow, and as I looked up the arm from the coffeepot I saw a nametag that read “Emily,” an apron over a uniform and the pretty face of a twenty-something blonde girl with a pixie smile and a cute upturned nose. And then I saw her eyes. Or more to the point, I saw my eyes in her face, and I knew that my life had just gotten a little more complicated.

“Yeah. I think she knows me. Or at least I think she thinks she knows me. Or thinks she knew me. Or something like that.” Just for the record, I’m never flustered. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve had a kid. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve found out some time after the fact that I’ve had a kid. This is, however, the first time I’ve been inexplicably drawn to a diner in the middle of Monkey’s Nut, TX while en route to find my estranged wife of some innumerable number of centuries only to be confronted with the unmistakable evidence of a past indiscretion. So I might have been a little more rattle-prone than normal.

“Well, how does she know you? ‘Cause I don’t know you, and it ain’t like this is that big a town, and really, I’d remember anybody as close to my age as you who looks like you if you’d come through any time recent.”

Yeah, that whole immortality thing? I look like I’m about 28. Forever. It has its advantages, like never having to worry about Grecian formula, but one of the drawbacks is that if you see the same person with a ridiculous amount of time between visits, you look the same as the last time they saw you. This becomes somewhat inconvenient when you’d rather the mother of your most recent offspring not drop a cup of coffee into the middle of the floor upon your arrival.

“It’s a long story. Look, here’s a buck for the coffee. I gotta roll.” And I stood up to head for the door. Except, of course, there was a problem with that. There’s always a problem. I mean, I understand the need for some dramatic conflict, but seriously, the last guy to write about me was Moses, can’t I give up a little on the conflict by now?

Myra had made it back into the diner and was headed my way, an inscrutable look on her face. It was almost a cliché, the way she ran into my arms, grabbed me by the back of the neck and kissed me like she was checking for recent dental work. Then, after she held me like there was no tomorrow, she pulled back, hands on my elbows, and hauled off and slapped the ever-loving shit outta me. I saw it coming, figured it was coming from the moment she dropped the coffee cup, really, but didn’t bother trying to stop it. I just took it, and let me tell you, a woman who’s spent a couple decades slinging hash at a roadside diner in Texas knows how to lay one on a guy.

“I deserved that.” I said, whipping a little trickle of blood from my lips. Yes, we can bleed. We can be hurt, we just don’t die from it. You don’t want to know exactly how exhaustive some of our testing of that fact has been. The details are a little disturbing, and the memories of those times a little embarrassing.

“You’re goddamned right you did,” Myra said, drawing back to lay another on me as I turned the other cheek. I didn’t turn the other cheek out of some retarded sense of pacifism, that’s just what naturally happens when somebody slaps the piss out of you, you turn the other cheek. I caught her hand before the blow landed, and did the only thing I thought might defuse the situation: I kissed her.

In retrospect, kissing Myra in her heightened state of emotion only had about a one in three shot of ending the violence, but it was a better shot than anything else had, and I really didn’t want to get physical with her. Not just because I don’t like hitting women, but also because the cook had come out of the kitchen to watch the floor show, and he looked like he could cause some serious damage if so inclined.

So I kissed her, and I poured everything I had into the kiss. It’s not like I have any supernatural abilities, other than immortality and a little bit of extra-sensory perception where Eve and Lucky are concerned, but after a couple of eons you pick up a few things. And since I spent most of the 15th century in France, I learned from some of the best.

When I felt the iron melt out of her spine, I stopped kissing her, looked into her eyes, and said “We should talk. Outside. All three of us.” And I led her to the door, Emily in tow. We walked out of the diner, around the side of the building to a couple of concrete picnic tables that I remembered from my last trip where the crew took their smoke breaks, and I sat Myra down. Emily sat next to her, and I sat on the table cross-legged facing them.

“So, I guess I have a little explaining to do,” I started, trying to figure out how I was going to get part of the story out without telling them the whole thing, when something new happened.

Now let me interject something here. This was something new. That’s a big deal. I hadn’t really been surprised by anything that happened in the world since Alexander made his great sweeps across the world. And that was just more me being impressed by his audacity and drive than actual surprise. But what happened next had never happened to me before, at least not since we left the Garden.

“You do indeed, Adam. You do indeed. And I think both of these young ladies deserve to know the truth. The whole truth, as they say.” The voice came from behind me, and I knew it instantly. It was Michael, the first unfallen angel I’d seen in the flesh since we left the Garden, and he did not look happy to see me.

So let’s take a good look at my afternoon so far. I was driving cross-country on a motorcycle I borrowed from Lucifer Morningstar on my way to look for Eve, my long-lost and content to stay that way immortal first love when I encountered a woman that I had relations with a couple decades before, along with the offspring of said relations, when the friggin’ Archangel Michael showed up demanding that I tell the women the truth, of all ridiculous things. I did the only thing I could think of, I walked briskly across the dusty parking lot from the diner to the run-down bar that shared the interstate exit and ordered myself a shot and a beer. There are some situations that just cannot be addressed properly without a certain level of mental lubrication, and this was shaping up to be a Cuervo-sized situation.

Once I felt that I had properly fortified myself for the confrontation that was coming, I made my way back across the parking lot to the picnic table where the archangel sat chatting idly with my daughter while her mother smoked a cigarette. These are not situations that occur every day, not even if you’re immortal.

“Myra, I think I owe you an explanation,” I started.

“Explanation? Explanation?!?” Usually when a word of four syllables involves more than two octaves, whatever follows is not going to be good, so I decided to head her off before she could get a head of steam going.

“Yes. Explanation.” I used The Voice. It’s nothing supernatural. I really don’t have any abilities other than the touch of ESP that everyone has and a ridiculous lifespan, but with age does come a certain level of authoritative voice, and I had elevated mine to capitalization status through a long period of study with the Greek orators. Those boys could talk, let me tell you.

“I know that I left without any warning, and I know that I showed up here again the same way. But I did warn you when we first became involved that I wouldn’t be staying very long, and that one day, you’d likely wake up to find me gone. We agreed that we’d enjoy the time we had, and that we wouldn’t put any strings on each other.”

“Yes, but that was before…” she trailed off and looked down, suddenly very interested in the scuffed sneakers she was wearing.

“Before what, Myra?”

“Before I fell in love with you.” She said, in a very small voice, this confident woman near fifty suddenly teenager-shy again, and looking for all the world like she wanted to be doing anything else in the world other than having this conversation. I knew the feeling, and I’ve had these conversations before. I could only imagine what it must have felt like going through it for the first time, and from the other perspective.

“Myra, I loved you too. I still love you, after a fashion, but there are some things about me that you didn’t know then, things that make it hard for me to fall in love.”

“Hard, Adam?” another party heard from as Michael decided to remind us that we weren’t having a private conversation.

“Michael, when I need your particular input on human relationships, I’ll look it up in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Until then, butt out. Myra, I’m not really sure how to put this, but it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not exactly normal. I look about the same as I did when I left, and that’s been”

“24 years and three months, give or take a week.”

“How do you keep track of it that closely…” I trailed off as I looked over at Emily, looking about twenty-three and a half, and decided that finishing the question would make me look infinitely stupid and lead to more unnecessary input from my good buddy Michael.

“Yeah, a little over 24 years. So, the thing is, this is not easy to explain…”

“Adam, you’ve had work done. It’s okay. We’re not LA, but we’re not complete bumpkins, you know. There’s even anesthesia for facelifts in Texas nowadays, and most folks don’t even assume guys are gay if they get a little Nip/Tuck action. Well, most folks don’t, anyway.”

I laughed. A lot. I’ve had this conversation on more than one uncomfortable occasion in the past few millennia, and I’ve never been accused of cosmetic surgery before. This was certainly a day of firsts. I laughed, and was so taken aback by the idea that I just blurted out the truth without thinking a second about it.

“I didn’t have work done, honey, I’m immortal. I don’t age. Remember the Adam from Genesis? Yeah, that would be me. And Moses got most of that stuff right, because I told it to him while we were hanging out in Israel.”

“Yeah, whatever. You’re immortal and I’m Farah Fawcett.”

“No, really. I look the same because I always look the same, at least since we left the Garden. And I left without saying anything because I’m not strong enough to stick around and watch the people that I care about grow old while I stay forever young.”

“What?”

“He’s telling the truth, love. If you just take it at face value for now we can get on to the grand reconciliation and we can all leave this dump of a town. Honestly, Adam, why you insist upon finding trysts in such father-forsaken holes in the cosmos I will never understand.”

“Michael, for the last time, Shut. Your. Mouth. And when did you decide to be British?”

“Just now. It’s a pretentious decade and I can’t possibly fit in without an appropriately posh accent.”

“I think you’ll manage just fine. Anyway, Myra, like I was saying. I’m immortal, and the reason I left was because I really did, I mean do, care for you, and it’s just too hard staying in one place for very long because of the inevitable questions about not aging, and that coupled with the whole watching the people you love grow old and die thing, well, it’s just gotten to be too much for me over the centuries, so now I relocate after a couple years at the most, and I stay less time in places where I’m afraid that a real connection might be starting, because I figure it’s easier on the people that I leave behind if I leave sooner rather than later, you know, giving them a chance to move on with their lives and that sort of thing, and…I should probably stop talking now.”

“Yes. Stopping talking now would probably be a safe move, Adam.” Her voice was icy, and the look on her face made me inch out of arm’s reach, fearing another slap might be forthcoming. Instead, she looked down at the ground, took a deep, shuddering breath, and looked me straight in the eye.

“You. Son. Of. A. Bitch. You selfish, uncaring, thoughtless, chickenshit son of a bitch! You ran out on me after I laid in your arms every night for six months! I told you things I’ve never told anyone before or since. I told you my hopes, my dreams, my fears, the embarrassing things that I’ve never once dreamed of having the courage to tell another living soul, and then one morning I come in after my shower and you’re gone!

Gone, without a note, without even a slap on the ass and a thank you! You worthless motherfucker, you leave me without any reason, without any hope of ever seeing you again, and then you have the unmitigated gall to come back in here twenty-four years later riding on your big motorcycle spouting some bullshit about immortal and scared to love and expect me to fall for it just like I fell for your line of shit the first time you were here?

Well fuuuuuuck you, buddy, that train left the station a long time ago, and the only thing I got out of the deal was a beautiful, smart, darling daughter that you don’t ever, ever deserve to try to be part of her life. So get back on your motorcycle and ride off into the sunset you came out of, and don’t you dream of coming back into my life or my baby’s life!” By now she was full-on sobbing, screaming and looking for things to throw at me, so before the cook decided that it was probably worth it to come through the screen door where he was watching the show, I reached out to Myra, put my arms around her, and held her.

I pulled her to my chest, and so many memories came flooding back. Memories of waking up with her naked lying across my chest in the middle of the night, the ceiling fan doing nothing to cut through the heat of the day that still lay across us like a blanket. Memories of sitting on a hillside by a pond watching the sun set and pretending to give a damn about the corks we had floating on the ends of our fishing lines. Memories of watching her sling coffee and hash browns along the length of the breakfast counter to long-haul truckers and locals alike, each served with a smile and a saucy shake of the hips. I held her as she cried like a baby that’s just lost her favorite toy, and more than one tear of my own slipped down my face to dampen the curtain of hair that hid her face.

But finally she cried herself out, and got tired of hitting my back with her fists, and she pulled away.

“Better?”

“Yeah, I just needed to get that off my chest.”

“Good. It’s good to see you again. I’m glad you’re well.”

“Well might be stretching it most days, but I’m still here. And I think I’m glad to see you, too. But why did you really leave? And really, where is your fountain of youth, because most days, especially the way my feet feel when I pull a double, I’d like a swig.”

“Well…you see, here’s the problem.”

“What?”

“I was telling the truth.”

“About what?”

“About the hard to believe bits. You know, immortal, Garden of Eden, Adam. That stuff? That was real. I’m that Adam, and I left because I didn’t want to fall in love with you and watch you die, and because I thought if I left soon enough I could be gone and you could move on, leaving me as just a faded, but pleasant memory from your youth.”

“So let me get this straight. You’re the Adam of Adam and Eve, fig leaves, snakes, apples and Cain and Abel?” This was Emily, who had been content to sit and watch things unfold to this point.

“Yes to all of the above, except Luck-Lucypher wasn’t really a serpent, just kind of a snake in the grass metaphorically, and the fig leaves really were just inserted by uptight artists. We went straight from naked to woven grass skirts, actually.”

“So if you’re Adam with a capital A, and I’m your daughter, which you seem oddly willing to accept at face value without any mention of DNA testing or other proof…”

“It’s the eyes. I recognize them. My eyes always breed true in the first generation, so I learned to recognize them after a while.”

“Okay, so you’re Adam of the original humans Adam and Eve, and I’m your daughter, and you’re immortal, so what does that make me?”

“From what I can tell, lifespan tends to follow the norms for the period when you’re born, so you won’t end up immortal. At least, none of my children since Cain have been.”

“And exactly how many of them have there been?”

“437.” I now remember how much I disliked certain aspects of hanging around with angels. They keep a lot of trivia floating around in their heads, because they can I guess. And Michael, being ridiculously honest and forthcoming even at the most inopportune times, felt that he had to share my exact offspring census with the gathered family at a time when some obfuscation may have been the more tactful approach.

“437? That’s not a family, that’s a regiment! Jesus, what do you do, just leave a couple of bastards in every town where you stop for lunch?” Emily was a little outraged at finding out that she was part of such a large family.

“No. Please remember that I’ve lived for eons. When you look back across the entirety of the human race, I am not responsible for an inordinate number of offspring. In fact, with the notable exception of the time of the Roman Empire, I have been very particular with the… I do not have to explain myself to my own daughter!”

Slap! “You do not have the right to call her that! You were nothing more than a sperm donor, she is my daughter and nothing of yours!” Again with the slapping.

I fixed Myra with my steeliest glare “Nothing of mine? You can’t even pretend to tell me that you’ve looked in those eyes every day for 23 years and not seen a piece of me looking back at you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish this conversation without getting hit any more.”

“So I had 436 brothers and sisters down through history, are any of them alive now?”

“One, but you might not want to spend much time with Cain. He has sibling rivalry issues. You mother is the first woman I’ve shared enough of myself with to have a child in some number of years, so you’re the only…”

“How many?” A small voice from Myra.

“Excuse me?”

“How many years? How long has it been since you ‘shared enough of yourself?’”

“About 1755 or so. I had a son. He died in the war.”

“Which war?” Emily asked.

“The Revolutionary War. We fought together. There was a battle, and he died. It wasn’t pretty. I held his hand when he went. He was 24.”

“I’m sorry.” Myra said softly.

“It wasn’t the first time I’ve held one of my children as they’ve died. It’s not something that gets easier the more often you do it, though.” We were quiet for a moment, then, both of us lost in thought. I flashed back on the dozens of times throughout history that I had watched my reflection dim in my child’s eyes, and Myra shuddered slightly as she thought about losing Emily.

“So why did you come back?” Myra asked me after a long moment.

“What?”

“Why did you come back? After all this time, why come back now? I don’t think I’m going to believe that you suddenly developed a misplaced parenting gene and decided to pop in to see if you had knocked me up and had a daughter to raise, and I’m sure as hell not going to believe you came back to see me again for another tumble after all these years.”

“Mom!”

“Oh don’t be all outraged, Em, I’m pretty sure he’s heard it all before.”

“I have, and more besides. But to answer your question, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t come back. At least, not intentionally. I was just riding along on my way back East, and got hungry. So I pulled in at the next stop. It wasn’t until I walked into the diner that I remembered that this was your place.”

“You…forgot me?”

“No! No, I didn’t forget you, I just didn’t remember that this was your place until I walked in. And honestly, if I had remembered, I probably would have kept on rolling. You know, trying not to reconnect and all that.”

“So you stopped because you just happened to get hungry near my exit?”

“Well, not exactly.” This from Michael, who had apparently forgotten my instructions to keep his mouth shut, and had either forgotten or was choosing to ignore the outcome of our last interaction, that last day in the Garden.

You see, Michael was the right hand of the Man. The hand that held the flaming sword, and was in charge of enforcing Dad’s edicts. So when we were tossed out of the Garden, it was Michael that did the tossing. Or at least, it was Michael that started the process. In the end it took several of the archangels to get the job done, and some of them looked a little the worse for wear when it was over. Michael particularly had seen better days. I’m pretty sure I broke his nose in the scuffle.

That may have been the first day of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but my sense of right and wrong was pretty deeply instilled long before, and when he put his hands on Eve and she cried out in pain as he twisted her arm behind her back to remove her from the only home we’d ever known, I reacted without thinking. Further reflection brought me to the conclusion that had I thought before I socked the head of the militant Archangels in the snoot, I would have done the same thing. Every time.
So there was no love lost between Michael and I, and this revelation that he may have had something to do with this uncomfortable reunion (not to mention the repeated slapping of my face) led me to turn, very slowly, and face the immaculately dressed scion of heaven.

“What do you mean, not exactly? And let’s have an answer without any of the standard angelic obfuscation, if you don’t mind too terribly.” I can affect a pretty solid posh British accent of my own when the situation warrants, and I felt like it definitely warranted.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, my boy.” He knew I hated it when he called me that. I always did. “I may have manipulated your hunger pangs a little to bring you to this place. These ladies are very important, and have a very important role to play in what is coming.”

“And what, exactly, is coming, Michael? And what do you have to do with it?”

“Well, Adam, ever since you and Eve left the Garden, things have been moving toward this final confrontation.”

“You’re evading. What confrontation?”
“Just because you’re obtuse does not mean that I am obfuscating. The final confrontation of Good and Evil, Adam. The choice between Right and Wrong, between God and Satan, between Order and Chaos. The Choice.”

“Oh.” I knew this was coming eventually. Dad explained to me back in the Garden that when he gave us free will, he knew that eventually we would have to make a final choice between the Light and the Dark. I always thought the “we” he was talking about was each individual, that everyone made their own choice, but Michael was making it sound like there was one big Choice that was going to happen that would decide the fate of the whole human race.

“Of course there is,” he said when I expressed my thoughts to him. “There was one Choice all those years ago in the Garden, and Eve made it. She chose Chaos, and you were removed from the Garden. Had she chosen us over your friend the Lightbringer, you and all your descendants would have grown and lived in the Garden forever. But she chose poorly, and humanity has suffered for it for millennia. This choice is like that one, and will be made just like that one was, by a random human on behalf of you all.”

Silence hung heavy in the afternoon air as we all contemplated the angel’s words. Michael couldn’t lie, the Archangels never learned how, so what he said was certain to be truth. It might not be the whole truth, since angels certainly knew how to hold things back, but this didn’t feel like one of those times. Of course, I hadn’t had any of my long talks with the seraphim in a few thousand years, so I suppose they could have learned a few new things.

“That’s not fair.” My head snapped around and my eyes locked on Emily, who stood beside the picnic table, eyes glistening as she stared a hole into Michael. “I’m not going to abide by the decision of some person who hasn’t even been chosen yet who knows nothing about me and has no right to make decision that will affect my whole life and the life of generations to come. That’s just not fair and I’m not going to put up with it!”

“My dear girl, not only is it fair, it’s the basis for your entire country!” Michael laughed. “Your entire idealized existence is run by people who don’t know you and couldn’t care less. This is just more representative governance, dearie, and you will deal with it because no one asked your opinion. Leave the grown-up talk to the grown-ups and go back inside to your dishes. We’ll call you when you’re needed.”

Emily walked up to Michael, looked him square in his sky-blue eyes, and slapped the shit out of him. Then she spun on her heel, marched over to the picnic table and sat there, jaw set, daring anyone to try to make her move. Yep, that’s my kid, I thought.

“You deserved that one, Mikey. Now what’s the deal, really? Somebody somewhere is going to run into Lucky, get tempted, and they’re going to make another Eve-level Choice? I thought we were a little far along the road for that.”

“Oh no, Adam, not at all, not at all. This Choice will be so much more that Eve’s little choice that she may as well be forgotten by history. This Choice will determine the true outcome of humanity. You see, now they’ve seen what Chaos is. They’ve seen the Dark. When Eve made her decision to bite the fruit, you two had no idea what the Dark was. You had no frame of reference, so Eve’s decision was made in a vacuum. A little unfair, really, that she’s taken so much blame for it for so long. After all, it is human nature to want to know what’s behind Door #2. I should know, I helped write that bit.” Michael had to stop to spit a little blood from his mouth halfway through his pretty little speech, which diminished the impact somewhat, but the words sat me on my ass just the same.

“So you’re saying Eve was set up?”

“Excuse me?”

“Eve. Was. Set. Up. The whole thing was planned from the Beginning. She didn’t have a choice after all. She had to take the fruit.”

“Of course not. She could have refused to eat the fruit. Of course, if she had, we would have come up with something else. Eventually you were going to have to leave the Garden. It was the only way you could see the world, after all.”

“So for thousands of years Eve has suffered, thinking that she brought all the evil into the world, that if she had been just a little stronger, or if Lucky had caught her on a better day, or if she hadn’t wandered off alone that morning, that she could have said no and spared the world a wealth of suffering, and now you tell me that if she’d said no you would have just kept on coming until eventually one of us gave in?” I might have been yelling a little by the last bit.

“Pretty much, yes.” The smug smile was what did it. I knew he was trying to push my buttons, and he was always the second best manipulator out of the angelic herd. At that precise moment, however, I didn’t care. I just knew that he had allowed Eve to suffer with the guilt of falling to temptation since the dawn of time, and I was, to put it mildly, pissed.

So I hit him. I swung from the knees, and I punched the leader of the Angelic Host right in the nose with everything I had. Angels aren’t really that different from the rest of us when they choose to take human form. They bleed, even though they can’t die. They can hurt, though, and a shot to the nose stings like a son of a bitch. So when I put everything I had into a roundhouse that connected solidly with Michael’s nose, I felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage under my knuckles and I knew that I’d broken it once again. Damn, that felt good. I highly recommend punching out a pompous archangel once an eon or so, it’s good for the soul.

“Dammit, Adam, that hurts!” He was lying on his back in the dusty parking lot and I liked him a lot better with blood spattering his French Blue dress shirt than I had just a few seconds earlier.

“It wasn’t meant to tickle, you prick. Screw you and your little games, I’m outta here.” I turned on my heel and headed back towards my bike, determined to leave Texas and Michael behind me as quickly as I could.

“Dad.” I stopped. There’s only a couple of words that can stop me in my tracks, but that one’s a lock. “Please don’t go.” I turned, and there was Emily, not looking at me, but looking at me all the same. “Please?”

“Why?” I asked. Like it mattered. She was my kid after all. If she wanted me to stay, I was staying.

“I think this might be important. And I think you might have to do this, no matter how big a douchebag this guy is.” Well, that cut right through it all right there. Sometimes there are things you just have to do, whether you want to or not, whether the people you have to do them with are douchebags or not; sometimes things have to get done. And sometimes you’re the only one that can do them.

“This is gonna suck.” I said as I walked back over to her.

“Probably.” She agreed, and she tossed Michael a dishrag to stop his bleeding nose.

“I’m gonna need some coffee.” I was walking back towards the rear entrance of the diner by now.

“I’ll handle it. The lunch rush is over and you never could make coffee worth a shit.” Myra said as she passed me on the way into the diner.

“Hey! Wait for me!” Cried the warrior archangel as he tried to get his bloody nose to cooperate enough to let him follow us into the diner. To quote one of my favorite philosophers, I had a bad feeling about this.

Chapter 2

‘Talk.” We were sitting in the back booth in the diner, Myra next to me, Emily on the inside seat facing her mom while Michael and I took the outside. There was no one in the diner but us, the cook and a Mexican kid washing dishes. The dinner rush was over, and the diner would be closing soon, so Myra locked the front door as soon as we came back in through the kitchen. She got coffee for all of us and a fresh towel for Michael’s nose, and we took over the back corner of the diner where we wouldn’t be disturbed.

“I said, talk.” I leaned into Michael and put a little more menace into my voice.

“Oh really, Adam, don’t try. You caught me off guard, and I need you, which are the only reasons you’re still mobile. I can kill you, remember? It’s what I do.” And he wasn’t kidding. Michael was the Lord’s enforcer, the one who dealt with anyone who broke the rules seriously enough for Dad to take a personal interest. I remembered.

“Mr. um, Michael. Please. Won’t you tell us what is going on and why you brought Adam back here after all this time?” Looked like Emily learned negotiation from her mother. ‘Cause she sure as hell didn’t get that silver tongue from me.

“Of course, since you asked nicely.” The little prick actually raised one eyebrow at me with that line. If I had any regrets about punching him in the snoot, they were gone.

“Now, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, there is coming a time of Choice, where a representative of humanity will make a decision between Order and Chaos, Good and Evil, the Light and the Dark. This human will decide the fate of all mankind for the rest of time, and it is up to you, Adam, to find him.”

“Huh?” Sometimes I’m less than eloquent.

“Was there a particular part that you didn’t understand, or was it just your general stupidity shining through?”

“Let’s take another look at the bit about me finding him. Why me?”

“Because you were there at the time of the first Choice, of course. Everyone who was there for the first Choice must be there for the final Choice.”

“So you’re saying that because I was there when Eve took the fruit…wait a second, you said everyone?”

“I believe I did.”

“Well, that’s gonna be a problem, seeing as how Abel’s suffering from a bad case of dead and Eve won’t be in the same time zone as me.”

“Your latest offspring shall fill the void left by your second son, and as for Eve, well, you’ll just have to be persuasive, now won’t you?”

“And Cain?”

“Cain, too, Adam.” Michael managed to lose the smug for just a minute at the mention of my oldest son. I hadn’t seen Cain in a long time, even for us, and it wasn’t a situation I was looking to change. Eve and I both had some issues with forgiveness: she couldn’t forgive herself, and I couldn’t forgive Cain. The last time we saw each other was the kind of meeting that country and western songs are written about, the kind of songs that feature destroyed bars, at any rate.

“No deal. I’m not going to put Eve through that, I’m not going to deal with Cain, and I’m not going to let Emily get anywhere near either of them. Period.”

“This is not open for debate, Adam, son of God.” Michael turned The Voice on me, and his had more behind it than just a few thousand years of practice. His Voice came complete with Power, the kind that comes from a guy that sits on a big throne, and I knew that the floor was closed for debate.

I looked at Myra, then at Emily, and closed my eyes for a second. “This is tough. I know this is going to hard to believe, but everything he said is true. And we do have to do this. He can’t lie, it’s part of what makes him insufferable. We have to do this, and we both have to go.”

“Both? You mean all three of us, right?”

“Actually, Myra, you don’t have to go. Emily’s presence is all that is required.”

“Oh hell no! I sit here for almost 25 years waiting for my one true love, and the day he walks back into my life you tell me that he’s just going to ride off with my daughter and some snotty angel with a bloody shirt? Well you’ve got another think coming, Mr. High and Mighty Archangel, there is no way in hell this woman is getting left behind while Captain Immortal rides off into the sunset again. He’s stuck with me, at least until I get to find out if he snores too much or can’t figure out how to put the toilet seat down, and that means you’re stuck with me, too. And if you don’t like it, I can bloody your damn nose for you again real quick-like.”

“Adam, you always have had a taste for, shall we say, volatile women.”

“We can say that. And Myra’s coming with us. I just met this daughter today, so I can’t rightfully just swoop in and take her with us, can I? Don’t answer that. I know you’ve never been the most subtle of the seraphim.”

“Comes with the flaming sword, old chap.”

“Alright, all bullshit aside, where are we going? Where’s this guy who’s gonna decide the fate of the world?”

“Well, he’s not the first of our concerns. First, we have to find Eve. And she might not be as easy to persuade as you three. And she could be even less thrilled at my appearance,” said the angel.

“So how exactly do you propose we continue our little extravaganza? If you recall, I rode here on a motorcycle, and somehow I doubt you came rolling up in a minivan.”

“I have a car. It seats four. I’ll drive.” Emily offered.

“I’ll drive.”

“No way, mother. My car, I’m driving.” Myra looked like she was about to say something when Michael piped up.

“I’m sure there will be ample time for all of us to share the driving. After all, by my calculations it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of a 15-hour drive to get to Eve. And since she is the closest, that should be our next stop, don’t you think?”

“And where, exactly, is Eve?” I asked.

“Well I don’t know exactly, but as far as I can tell, she’s in New Orleans.”

“What the hell is she doing in New Orleans?”

“She’s…working. Yeah, that’s it. She has a job there.”

“Michael, there’s obviously something you don’t want to tell me, so of course that’s what I want to know. What is she doing in New Orleans?” I loomed a little, but the little shit was unperturbed. That’s what comes from being God’s Own Enforcer, you get to be a little hard to intimidate.

“She’s working. And if you want to know exactly what she’s doing, then I guess we’ll have to find her.”

“Alright then, let’s roll. Emily, keys.” I was already heading for the door with my hand stretched out behind me, but Myra’s voice drew me up short.

“Freeze, buster. You might be able to fly the coop at a moment’s notice without so much as a hairbrush, but us womenfolk are going to take a few minutes to pack. So why don’t you and your little friend just sit there and enjoy each other’s company while Em and I go pack a couple of bags. We’ll be right back.”

Now I’m not going to say the thought of hopping on Lucky’s bike and rolling east didn’t occur to me, but I knew that would only doom me to a trip with a naggin archangel as my only company, and besides, since her presence was evidently required, I figured this would be a good time to get to know my youngest living child. They didn’t take that long, especially considering their gender, and it didn’t take us long to catch I-49 east and get the wheels on Emily’s Camry to humming. We stopped for the night in Tyler, a little town on the appropriate side of Dallas, and got a couple of rooms at a Quality Inn.

Michael volunteered to stay outside with the car to “better commune” with his Lord, since angels don’t really need sleep, and Myra just laughed when I raised on eyebrow at her as I headed into my room. She turned around and followed Emily into their room and I tossed my backpack onto the other bed and stretched out to watch a Law & Order rerun for a little while. I didn’t feel much like sleeping, and since there’s always a Law & Order rerun on no matter what time you turn on a hotel TV, I just kicked back and tried to process a day, that even in my nearly limitless experience, had to deem was pretty screwed up.

I had processed myself into a nice solid sleep with my boots still on when I heard a soft knock on my door. I grinned and smoother my hair into place as I crossed the room, popping an Altoid as I took the chain off the door.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep with me laying just a few feet away…”my words trailed off when I looked down at Emily standing there in a t-shirt and sweatpants, looking up at me nervously.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to…I should just…I’ll see you in the morning…Oh fuck I’m suchanidiot…” she turned and started to bolt but I caught her arm before she finished the turn.

“Hey, hey, hey what’s wrong? Come in, sit down, I’m sorry, I just…” I trailed off myself as I realized I was rambling.

“Just what? Just thought I was my mom?” She arched an eyebrow at me in a perfect imitation of the look I’d given her mom a couple of hours before. “Not bloody likely, as your divine friend would say. She’s out cold. I think today was a lot for her to handle.”

“I know the feeling. I thought I was going to lie here and watch TV for a while and didn’t even know I was asleep until your knock woke me.”

“Oh God! I’m so sorry! I’ll go, I didn’t mean to wake you, I just assumed you’d be up. I mean, Michael doesn’t sleep, so I guess I thought that maybe you didn’t either.”

“Michael’s an angel. I’m human, or at least pretty much human. I do sleep, not as much as most, but I do sleep. But I’d rather talk to you. I’m sure you’ve got a few questions for me.”

“A few? Yeah, that might be an understatement. But I guess, I mean, I guess my only real question is why?”

“Why? Why what?”

“Why did you make my mom fall in love with you? Did you love her? I know why you came back, you didn’t mean to, but why did you leave in the first place? And don’t give me that shit about not watching people die, I can see that lie in your eyes.”

Sometimes I wish I had normal kids. All these years, and every single one of them has been a precocious little shit. All the way back to Abel, who knew what our Father wanted almost before he did. And Cain, who was so quick and strong. They’ve all been amazing kids in some way. Take Matthew, my last son. He was the bravest kid I’d ever seen. I didn’t want him to fight in the war. I knew better than to think that the Redcoats actually had a chance – free will has been winning out ever since Eve ate the fruit, but Matthew had a fire in his soul. He burned with so much righteousness that he would have blinded that little putz Michael, and he felt the injustice of the British rule so sharply that I never had a chance of talking him out of the war. I only went along to protect my identity, and in the hope that if I was with him, I could keep Matthew from doing anything too terribly foolish. I was wrong, of course.

It wasn’t even that much of a battle, really. We were far from any of the major incursions, just fighting with a bunch of patriots in Winnsboro, SC when a Loyalist group decided to follow up on the recent surrender of Charleston by wiping out the patriots throughout South Carolina. Our ragtag bunch beat them back pretty handily, but not before Matthew was shot in the leg. It would have been easier on him if they’d hit him in the chest. The doctor, or what passed for one there, didn’t even try to treat the wound, just hacked his leg off above the knee with a crude saw. The doctor knew nothing of disinfectant, and all he had for a painkiller was a stick to bite down on, and a little whiskey when he woke up the next morning screaming in agony.
He lasted for six days before the pain, the shock and the infection killed him. I sat beside his bed day and night with my musket across my legs, daring anyone to try and move him. I held him when he shook with chills, I mopped his brow when the fever started, and eventually I wrapped my arms around him and cried into his sweat-soaked hair as he lay still. I looked down into Emily’s eyes, blazing truth the way Matthew’s eyes used to glow with righteous anger, and I started to tear up.

“Alright. But if we’re going to have this conversation, I’m going to require some mental lubrication.”

“Huh?”

“A drink, kiddo. I don’t tell these stories sober. It’s a rule I’ve got. Think your mother will be good to sleep through the night? This could take a while.”

“After the day she’s had? Yeah, I gave her half an Ambien, so she’ll be out for a good eight hours.”

“Then let’s roll.” I started toward the stairs, heading for the bar a couple hundred yards down the street, when I heard Emily clear her throat. I stopped, and looked at her standing there, barefoot, 24 years old, wearing sweats and a T-shirt that obviously served as pajamas. “Good point. You wait in there, I’ll go get us a bottle and a couple of glasses, and I’ll be right back.”

No, I didn’t ask her what she liked. I didn’t really care. The booze wasn’t for her, it was for me. She would probably need a slash or two before we were done, but I was gonna need a couple good belts before we ever started.

“That’s not good for you, you know.” Michael said as I walked past the car. He was sitting on the hood leaning back against the windshield looking up at what stars he could see through the sodium vapor parking lot lights.

“If I want your opinion, angel, I’ll beat it out of you.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“If I ever ask for your help, please stick that fiery toothpick you carry around up my ass.” I didn’t wait around to hear his response, if there was one. I walked to the bar, flashed my best smile at the bartender and asked her how much for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Green. After a few minutes of negotiation, I slipped him a ridiculous amount of money and walked back to the hotel with two highball glasses and bottle of good whiskey.

I knocked on the door, walked in, poured two fingers of amber firewater for Emily and knocked back a stiff shot of my own. I decided to dilute the second belt with one ice cube and knocked it back, too.

“Geez, Dad. Is it that bad? You’re hitting that stuff pretty hard.”

It had been a long time since anyone called me Dad, or anything like it, and her words made my hand shake a little more. I poured myself a third drink, added a couple of ice cubes to this one, and sat down at the ubiquitous round table that you find in every cheap hotel across the US. Emily sat cross-legged on the bed nearest the door, and for a long time she just looked at me.

“Well, go ahead. You wanted to ask me questions, ask.” I said when I could no longer stand her looking at me like she could see everything without giving me the benefit of lying about it.

Her voice was very small when she finally spoke, but it was loud enough to bring the walls of Jericho down all over again. “Why didn’t you want me?” She looked up at me through a curtain of her own hair, and those eyes, those eyes that could see straight into the heart of the matter, were full of tears.

I was sitting on the bed next to her before I knew I’d moved, and I was holding her as she cried little girl tears. She sobbed like the little girl I’d never known her as, and all I could do was sit there stupidly and wrap my arms around her and rock back and forth. After a few minutes her crying started to slack off, and I smoothed her hair back out of her face and wiped her face dry with my shirt sleeve. I looked her straight in the eyes and said, with all the sincerity in my soul “I never knew about you, baby. I was gone before your mom even knew she was pregnant. If I’d known you were coming, I could never have left you. And if I’d ever seen you, I could never have left you. I’ve had hundreds of kids over the years, and I’ve never been able to stand leaving after I’ve seen their eyes. It’s not that I didn’t want you, baby, it’s that I never knew there was a you to want.”

“I know. I mean, I’ve always known that. But it never mattered, you know? At least, not until you were here to say it to me.”
“I get it. But it’s true. You know that, right? I didn’t leave you. I just left. It might not have been the right thing to do, but it felt like what I had to do. At least then.”

“I know. So why did you make my mom fall so hard for you? You know she’s never had a third date in my life?”

“Wow. No, I didn’t know that. That wasn’t the plan. That’s not the way it was supposed to go. We were just supposed to be a summer thing, a couple of young people sowing oats, or at least one young person sowing oats and one person who still looks pretty good for a really, really, really old dude.” She laughed, and I knew we were good. If I can make ‘em laugh they can’t stay too mad at me. And it’s harder to throw things when you’re laughing.

“So you were supposed to just be a fond memory and maybe the face she saw every once in a while when she looked across the breakfast table at her husband?”

“Something like that, although I’ll admit in my vainer moments to hoping I was remembered in slightly different moments than those taking place at the breakfast table, unless you have an unconventional idea of breakfast.” I arched one eyebrow and got a punch on the arm and a golden laugh as my reward.

We talked through the night, mostly inconsequential getting to know you crap, but it was nice to take the time to connect to someone, someone who I didn’t have to hide my true nature from. By the time the sun came up and her mother came in from the room next door with coffee we were friends.

“I thought you two would make friends if I gave you a little time to get to know each other.” Myra said as she came through the door I’d never bothered to close the night before. “Where’s the angel?”

“Last I saw he was lying on the hood of the car looking up at the stars. He might have taken off to get a better look at the sunrise, though. That’s the kind of thing they used to do.”

“Take off?” Emily asked.

“Yeah, you know, fly? They really can do that if they choose to take that form, but they have to make sure not to let anybody see them. That form is a little much for most humans to handle seeing.”

“But not you?”

“Nah, kiddo. Remember, I saw them in their natural form all the time back in the Garden days. So it doesn’t bother me. It unnerves me a little more to see them in human form, actually. Especially Michael. He never was much of one to hang with us in the Garden, and I haven’t seen him, or any of them really, since they tossed us out.”

“Does the Garden still exist? Could you go back there?”

“No. It was more than a place, it was a state of being. Being cast out of the Garden was more being cut off from all the pure light of the world than it was being tossed out of a physical place. I suppose it’s something similar to what Lucky felt when his little revolution failed, being deprived of seeing the face of God for all eternity. Being tossed out of the Garden was a little like that. We were cut off from our Father, who had held a pretty active role in our lives until then. And all our friends, the angels and animals both, were gone. We couldn’t talk to the animals anymore, and they started killing each other. And the angels, well, between the day we were tossed out and yesterday, the only angels I’ve seen were either fallen or porcelain.”

“That’s awful.” Emily said, as she threw her arms around my neck.

“Moderately awful, yes.” I hugged her back as Myra sat on the bed on my other side.

“Well isn’t this just fucking precious,” came a voice from the door. I went very, very still, the way someone does when they hear a rattlesnake’s buzz as they’re walking through the desert. I knew the voice, even after all these years, and I knew that his presence here was no more an accident than my picking that particular diner as I cruised east.

My oldest son slid into the room, all sinewy muscle and blue-black hair, and sat down in the chair. He took my abandoned glass of whiskey, knocked it back, and poured himself another. “Good choice, pops. Life is too short for cheap liquor, even for us.” He raised a glass to Emily, said “Cheers, baby sister. Cheers,” and sipped the amber liquid, taking a deep breath as he set down the glass.

“Now, Dad. Suppose you tell me exactly what is going on and why you and Baby Sis and this mortal floozy are snuggling in a no-tell motel while Mom’s working in a strip joint on Bourbon Street shaking her moneymaker for wasted tourists. I mean, after all these years of being the black sheep of the family I suddenly find myself downright respectable by comparison.”

I was on my feet before I knew it, but Cain was always fast. He caught me and had me bent backwards over the cheap table quicker than an eyeblink. His strong arm went across my neck in a choke, and he got right down in my face, close enough for me to smell the hate on his breath. He smiled at me, and my blood ran cold. I knew real fear for the first time in centuries, as my psychotic son held my life in his hands.

“No, no, papa. We’ll have none of those outbursts. They aren’t good for the soul, are they? But what would I know about that, right? I don’t know how you got me here, and I don’t care. But it’s not going to end well for you, Daddy. It’s not going to end well at all. Remember, only one of us can really hurt one of us. And I know how to hurt, Daddy. I know very well how to hurt. And I…” Cain grunted heavily and his grip on my neck loosened as he slumped off my back onto the floor. I got up off the table shakily and saw Emily behind him holding a Gideon bible like a sledgehammer, her hands shaking but her eyes fierce. I looked up at her and saw her ultimate grandmother in those flaming eyes, and there was no denying that this kid was something to reckon with.

Chapter 3

I tied Cain to the chair with his belt and mine, and sent Emily running for Michael. I hoped the angel was within earshot, and had a plan, because I had no idea how we were going to deal with this. In the back of my mind I knew we would have to deal with Cain eventually, but I had convinced myself that Eve would come first, because Eve could deal with him. Yeah, I know, probably not the greatest parenting strategy, but after a half dozen eons or so I think I can get by without any tips from Dr. Spock, alright?

Apparently Michael was close, because Emily brought him back a few minutes later, and the little shit had the audacity to look pleased about the situation.

“What, by all the names of the Father, are you grinning about?” I asked as Emily closed the door behind the angel.

“Well, Adam, it should be apparent. Now we don’t have to look for Cain. He’s found us. It’s a capital development!”

“Capital?!? Jesus and Mohammed, no wonder nobody likes the British! I’ll grant you that he’s found us and that makes one bit easier, but now we have to deal with him, and I guarantee that will do nothing but complicate matters.”

“Complicate matters? Oh Daddy, you always did underestimate me. I will do so much more than merely complicate matters. I plan to end matters. I’m tired of this dance we’ve done with each other for so long, and now that I see you again, it’s finally time to do something about it. Just like I did with your precious Abel.”

“Don’t. Speak. That. Name. You lost all right to say your brother’s name when you took his life, you insane little bastard! I should end you myself right now. I should have done it a lifetime ago, but”

“But what, Daddy? But Mommy wouldn’t let you? But you didn’t have the guts? But you didn’t know then that you couldn’t die so you chickened out because you were afraid of going to Hell with your friend Lucypher? BUT WHAT, DADDY?” Spittle landed on my shirt as he screamed the last at me.

“But he still loves you and can’t stand the thought of losing you, too.” Emily was sitting on the far bed, all the way across the room from where Michael and I flanked Cain’s chair, but she didn’t have to raise her voice to stop our yelling match cold.

“Can’t you see? He’s spent thousands of years bludgeoning himself for not seeing what you were going to do, and for not stopping you. He’s beaten himself bloody for centuries for not stopping your mother from going off alone into the Garden that day. He’s never forgiven himself for never telling you that he forgave you the second he told you to get out of his sight, and he’s been so afraid of the hurt in your eyes every time you look at him that he’s tried to cover it up with anger. You know, for people that have lived for thousands of years, you’re all pretty stupid sometimes.”

I listened to her say the words I couldn’t even bring myself to think, and looked at Cain as he saw the truth of what she said reflected in my eyes, and I did something I thought I’d never do again after Matthew died in my arms. I cried. My legs went weak and I fell to my knees in that cheap room on the second floor of a Quality Inn in Tyler, Texas, and I wept like a baby.
I might have mentioned that I have remarkable children. I might have mentioned that it’s sometimes a pain in the ass. If I didn’t, then I’ll say it now: it’s sometimes a pain in the ass to have remarkable children. And to find out 23 years into her life, well after the time that she’s learned enough to not hold back the truth just to spare her elders’ feelings, that you have a daughter that’s blessed (or cursed?) with the type of insight that leads Asian men to sit on mountaintops and burn incense is the kind of unwelcome surprise that I’d had just about e-damn-nough of this week. But it happened, and then Cain happened, and then Emily dropped one of her little insight bombs on me and I did my best impression of a four-year-old with a bloody knee wailing on the carpet in a cheap motel in Texas. It wasn’t my most dignified of moments, to say the least.

After a few minutes I stopped crying, stood up and made my way over to the cheap dresser. I leaned on it for a minute, grabbed the bottle of whiskey, and knocked off the last of the bottle in one long pull. Then I turned around and untied Cain. Something told me he wasn’t going to try to kill me anymore.

“Is it true?” He asked after a long moment of us just looking at each other, while Myra and Emily watched us watching each other.

“I don’t know if I could have put it so succinctly, but yeah, it’s true.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“We were always a little busy trying to beat each other’s brains out. It seemed easier just to work with the status quo than to try and change things.”

“You mean easier than admitting you were wrong?”

“Yeah, well that’s never been one of my strong points. Ask your mom.”

“She might have used the term ‘pig-headed’ once or twice.”

“Among others,” I replied.

“Among many, many others.”

“You mother is a well-spoken woman, in many languages. I’m sure her descriptions of me were unflattering in at least a dozen.”

“At least.” He paused, then took a deep breath. “I really am sorry, you know.”

“I know. You loved him as much as any of us.”

“More most days.”

“Then why? What would possess you to…” I trailed off as I looked at the doorway, where Michael was suddenly trying to look very small. That’s tough to pull off when you’re a 6’3” blonde Adonis with eyes the color of lapis jewelry and a hair color that has spawned an entire line of Clairol products. I looked at the angel and worked diligently to keep my voice steady and my hands from shaking as I asked him “Did you have anything to do with this?”

“Anything to do with what, mate?”

“I’m going to ask you this once, calmly, and I’m even going to give you once chance to answer me truthfully with a limited time offer than neither myself nor any of my progeny living now or yet to be born will take any retribution on you due to the answer.”

“Attempt.”

“Excuse me?”

“Attempt to take any retribution. Remember exactly who I am, Son of God.” I saw the faint outline of wings glowing behind him, and it seemed like a ghostly fire engulfed the air around his right hand.

“There is no attempt, Michael. Remember exactly who I am, Angel. I am the first earthborn son of the Lord Almighty, and I understand exactly what I can and cannot do, as do you. Now, I will ask this only once, did you have anything to do with the death on my son, Abel?”

“Yes.”

“Emily, hold your brother down. Michael, explain to me exactly what happened.”

“You don’t need to know everything about it, Adam. You aren’t part of that story, but I will tell you that there were forces other than mere human jealousy at work on your sons that day. Another Choice was made, and you and Cain are just now dealing with the consequences.”

“Cain, what was the Choice? What did he make you do?”

“I don’t know what either of you are talking about. I didn’t see Michael that day, or any other day until just now. Remember, you were already long out of the Garden by the time Abel and I came along, we just heard the stories. We never cavorted naked with the seraphim.”

“It wasn’t like that. And if he didn’t force you into the Choice, then…fucking Lucky” I trailed off, knowing that I was going to have to kick his ass for this one.

“He didn’t choose, Dad.” Emily said from the bed.

“Huh?” I swear, some days I sound like a Neanderthal. Or Al Bundy.

“He wasn’t the one to make the Choice. Look at them,” she said, gesturing to Michael and Cain. “Cain has no idea what kind of Choice you mean, and no clue why you keep giving it emphasis, and Michael can’t look either of you in the eye. Cain didn’t choose to kill Abel. Abel chose to die in Cain’s place.”

Nobody spoke. The silence stretched past uncomfortable well into downright disturbing when finally Cain asked “Is it true? Did Abel choose to die?”

Michael never looked up, and when he spoke it was almost a whisper, as though he was looking back all those years at my son’s broken body. “Yes.”

Cain stood calmly, walked over to Michael and said to him in a low voice that made my blood stop moving altogether for a moment, “I will abide by my father’s promise and I will take no vengeance upon you for my brother’s death. Nor will I exact my due recompense for the thousands of years of suffering I have endured thanks to your meddling, but I will, just one more time, let enough of the beast loose from my soul to do this.” And with that, he grabbed the angel by the shirt front, spun him around until his back was to the room, and punched him straight in the nose. Cain watched him fall, clutching his freshly rebroken nose as he crawled towards the small bathroom, and then walked out to lean on the railing outside our door.

I stood for a moment looking at the bloodied angel, then glanced up at Emily and Myra. “You’re gonna want some clothes at this point. Pajamas no good for the next step.”

“Next step?” Myra asked.

“Yeah. The next step is where the healing starts. Follow me when you’re dressed. Em knows where to find me.” With that, I walked out into the morning sun and leaned on the rail next to my son. I looked over at him as he held his head in his hands like it weighed a thousand pounds.

“Come on, son. We’re blowing this pop stand.”

“Where are we going?”

“Intensive therapy. Follow me.” And I walked down the stairs and back to the bar where I’d bought the whiskey the night before. The morning shift didn’t recognize me, but when I tossed ten twenties on the bar and said “Bring good whiskey ‘til that’s gone, then you can bring cheap stuff for the next couple hours,” it was like we were long-lost friends. I took a seat at a table near the far wall and lined up eight shot glasses. It didn’t take long before all four seats were full, and we commenced to processing all the events and revelations of the past twenty-four hours. I figured by the time Michael got himself cleaned up, we’d all be too drunk to want to hit him again, or at worst too drunk to actually connect with a punch.

After several hours, multiple bottles of whiskey, bourbon and by the end of things, tequila, we had gone through about twenty-five hundred dollars worth of booze, and Emily and Myra were looking a little the worse for wear. Cain and I may have had a slight edge on them in the tolerance department, and let’s face it, once you’ve drank mead with real Vikings, there’s not a whole lot of impressive rolling out of Milwaukee. There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation, just a lot of liquid group therapy and some gentle dancing around the big topics. Cain and I talked through Emily a lot, asking her what she was interested in, what she wanted to be when she grew up, that kind of stuff. We very studiously didn’t discuss any abandonment issues, empty feelings because of being an only child or anything else that might have ripped off scabs that were just starting to form.

I figure we sat in that bar for the better part of a day and a half digesting a steady diet of Emmylou Harris, Reckless Kelly and Townes Van Zant before Michael finally came strolling in, looking for all the world like he was on a pleasure cruise rather than rolling cross-country with a couple of immortals who’d broken his nose twice in twenty-four hours and their indefinable mortal relations.

“Well, look what the cat regurgitated onto the rug.” I said sweetly as he pulled up a chair and materialized a white wine spritzer. Lucinda Williams was on the jukebox singing Return of the Grievous Angel and I was pretty sure that he had either timed his entrance to fit the song, or more likely that he had changed the jukebox to make a better entrance.

“Really, Michael? That has to be the only wine glass within a hundred miles. Do you want to get punched in the face again that badly? I’m sure if you just asked, one of the boys here would be willing to oblige you. It’s not necessary to show all of Texas exactly what a fairy you angels can be.” Myra cracked herself up and went into a fit of drunken giggles at the whole fairy angels bit.

“I presume we have gotten all of our childishness out of our systems and are ready to proceed with the world-saving portion of our program?” Michael ignored Myra. Probably a good idea given her level of inebriation. I wouldn’t put it past her to knock the angel on his ass herself.

“Well, in the words of Jaws, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.” I said.

“Excuse me?” responded the confused angel. Pop culture references, even ones dated enough for me to follow, were apparently no good with the seraphim. All that harp music interfered with their television reception, I guessed.

“We came her in a Civic. I don’t think five of us are leaving that way.” I explained.

“Don’t sweat it, Dad. I didn’t exactly fly here, you know?” Oh yeah. Cain had to have some type of transportation. “My bike’s right outside.” I felt a little twinge when he said that. Like father, like son, I suppose. Maybe I could have a relationship with this son even after all the water under (and over) that bridge.

“Well, then, we should go. Cain, I believe you should take the lead on this leg. After all, you know where we’re going.” Michael said.

“Well, I don’t know exactly where we’re going, just a general idea.” Cain said, and he suddenly became very interested in the tops of his shoes.

“And where, roughly, does that general idea lead?” I started to have a really bad feeling about the answer as my thoughts flashed back to Cain’s initial re-entry into my life a couple of days back.

“Well, it’s kinda tough to say. You know how Mom is, she doesn’t like to stay in one place too long, and sometimes I get mixed signals when I’m trying to track her down, and…”

“Cain. Where. Is. Eve?” I used the Daddy Voice. It’s different from The Voice, but has a similar effect, if the audience is a little more limited. I was happy and more than a little surprised to see that it still worked even if your kid is a few thousand years old.

“Bourbon Street.”

“And what is she doing on Bourbon Street? As I recall, Eve is an excellent musician, so I have some slight hope that she’s playing music.”

“Not exactly, Michael.” Cain replied. I knew that whatever the answer was, I was not going to like it.

“So what, exactly, is she doing, son?” I asked as gently as I could muster.

“Dancing.”

“Where is she dancing, Cain?” I tried to keep my voice level.

“Well, she moves around a lot.”

“Cain. Talk.” I said. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but it had been a long time since I’d been on Bourbon Street and had a modicum of hope that it had changed since the hurricane.

“Big Daddy’s.” Apparently neither Bourbon Street nor Eve had changed since the last time I saw them. Bourbon Street still housed as many strip clubs as jazz clubs, and Eve still worked hard to surround herself with as much of humanity’s filth as possible. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against strip clubs, and some of my favorite conversations throughout the years have been with strippers and prostitutes. I’ve always appreciated their unvarnished view of the world. They have a level of honesty that you just don’t find in “legitimate” society, and every once in a while I’ve needed that type of honesty. But I knew instantly that Eve wouldn’t be working in the top-notch strip club, she’d be working the seediest dive on the street, and that at some point before we left New Orleans, I was going to end up hitting somebody again. And there was only about a 50/50 shot that it wouldn’t be Eve.

So I knocked back one last shot of Patron, looked over at the Jason (after a certain number of bottles, you move into a first-name relationship with your bartenders) and asked if we had any cash left. He looked over at the tab and brought me four twenties. I handed them back to him with a couple of unflattering pictures of Ben Franklin and headed toward the door into the sunlight just as Robert Earl Keen started to sing “Sherry was a waitress, at the only joint in town.” I chuckled to myself and thought about the truth is Keen’s song. The road really does go on forever, but I thought this party might be just getting started.

Chapter 3

It’s not a long ride from Tyler, Texas to New Orleans, but when you have to make a couple of pit stops and more than a couple of puke stops because of a two-day bender, it can be a seriously unpleasant trip. Michael and I drove, and Cain followed on his bike as Emily and Myra did their best impersonations of plague victims in the back seat. Cain and I had consumed nearly twice as much as they had, but we weren’t precisely normal, if you’ll recall. We only get about as drunk as we want to, and we can shake it off pretty quickly when we need to. I figured we needed to. The girls didn’t have quite our level of resilience, so it was a tough trip for them.

Finally, about nine hours into a seven-hour trip we rolled into the Crescent City. I’d never spent a whole lot of time in New Orleans, but I’d been there once or twice. I had nothing against the town, it just felt like too much old for me, and I had enough memories of old running around in my head without shaking them loose walking through the French Quarter. Cain pulled even with my window as we rolled off the interstate, and yelled “Follow me.”

We meandered through the Quarter until we pulled up to a small house on Royal Street, just off Jackson Square. Cain pulled his bike into a narrow alley and gestured for me to park on the street in front of the house. He motioned for me to follow, and we all trooped up a rickety flight of stairs into a second-floor apartment.

“Welcome, dear pater, to my humble abode.” He said grandly as we entered his slightly shabby yet somehow chic living room. There was a sofa that somehow managed to be threadbare and classy all at the same time, a feat I’d never managed personally, and a couple of mismatched lamps that nonetheless tied the whole room together somehow. The walls were decorated with black and white photographs of people in various ages, all taken in and around New Orleans. Emily wandered the walls as if in a museum, while her mother made a beeline for the sofa and curled up into a little, sweaty, exceedingly hung over ball.

“Cain, these are amazing,” Emily murmured as she looked at the photos. “It’s like you took a picture right into their souls and hung them up on the wall. Like this one here, I can almost see this woman crying for her lost little boy even though she’s smiling at a street musician.”

“You know, baby sister, there are some culture that still believe that a camera can steal your soul and trap it in the photograph. I think it’s the opposite, really. I think that the camera can set free a part of your soul that’s trapped in the everyday and let it loose to be miraculous. Turn around.” She did, and Cain was holding an expensive-looking digital camera. He snapped her picture before she could even vamp, and said “Gotcha! Now I’ve got a little piece of Emily-soul to carry around with me and stick on my wall.”

“You ass, you could at least have given me some warning.” She went over to him and punched him on the arm. “Well? You’ve gotta at least me see it so I can tell you to delete it.”

“Oh no, baby sister. You can see it, but I’m not deleting it. This is the most time I’ve spent with a sibling in a long time, and I want something to commemorate the moment.” He was smiling, but there was a heaviness to his eyes, and the moment, that gave us all pause. Myra broke the silence by getting up off the couch, bolting down a dark hallway into the tiny bathroom and being noisily sick.

“That’s Mom. She always knows just what to say.” And just like that, all the tension flowed out of the room. Emily slid her head under Cain’s arm just like they’d been raised brother and sister and snatched the camera out of his hands. She thumbed the controls expertly until her photo came onto the tiny screen.

“wow.” Her voice was very small, and she looked suddenly nervous as she looked up at Cain. “Is that what I really look like?”

“The camera doesn’t lie, baby sister. You’re beautiful.”

“But, I’ve never been pretty.”

“You’re right. You’re beautiful. I might have mentioned that. Have I developed a stutter after all these centuries?”

“But, it’s not right, I’m not like that, I don’t take good pictures, that’s not me.” By now my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I wandered over to look at the image over her shoulder. Cain had caught her just as she turned around, hair flying slightly, with a touch of backlight making it look even more golden than normal. Her mouth was open a little, teeth just barely showing in a pixie grin, and her eyes twinkled in light I never saw in that apartment. She was, in a word, beautiful.

Now don’t get me wrong, Emily was a pretty girl, and in the right setting maybe even men who aren’t her father would consider her beautiful. But after a drinking binge, nine hours on the road in the Texas-Louisiana summer and a total of maybe three hours sleep in as many days, she wasn’t at her best. But in Cain’s photo, she was everything she could ever be on her best day. He captured the absolute essence of Emily and distilled it into a single digital image. It was both breathtaking and a little scary.

“Damn, Cain. That’s an amazing picture. That’s the kind of thing photographers wait their whole life to capture, and you did it without even thinking or trying twice. You’ve got a gift, son.” I said.

“Well, Dad, I’ve had a lot longer to practice than most artists.”

“Good point.”

“So, other than to admire your skill in photography, which is considerable, and to allow Myra to vomit in your toilet, which is admirable, why are we here?”

“Well, I thought we could rest up here and then you and I could go looking for Mom later tonight when the clubs open.”

“You don’t think they’re open now?”

“They are. She’s not there yet.”

“How do you know? Never mind. You know. More to the point, does she know you’re here?”

“We’ve talked from time to time.”

“Is she alright?” This time it was my voice that was small, and I couldn’t look at my son’s eyes. I walked across the living room and out onto his tiny balcony. It was just big enough to hold two wrought-iron chairs and a tiny round table. I bypassed the chairs and leaned on my elbows on the railing instead.

“She’s okay, Dad. At least, she’s okay for Mom. You know how she is.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“She’s bitter, and angry all the time and she gets into fights with clients and gets guys so mad they punch her and throw her into the street half-naked sometimes and she runs through jobs like I go through clean socks, and I don’t think she’s happy unless she’s miserable.”

“Yeah, I know.” I did, too. She’d been like that ever since I brought Abel’s body back from the shallow grave where Cain buried him and laid him to rest under the Tree. Yeah, that Tree. It wasn’t the Garden anymore, and it wasn’t really the Tree anymore, since our Father had withdrawn his presence from us, but it was still the oldest Tree we had ever known, so it seemed somehow appropriate. I dug a deep hole and buried my eldest son there, and when I finished shoveling dirt back in on top of his lifeless form I turned around and saw that I was alone.

Eve stayed gone for several days, and when she came back she was different. The loss of our two sons in the same day had changed something fundamental in her, and it wasn’t long after that when we went our separate ways. We travelled the world for centuries, our paths sometimes crossing, but never for very long. And here I was after thousands of years ready to make nice and play happy family again. Oh, and here’s our long-lost son, the one that you kept in touch with and I said I’d never touch again except to strangle. Yeah, I could see this was gonna be a long night.

So I sat around my son’s apartment in the Quarter for the afternoon and we danced around each other like so many fathers and so many sons have done since almost the dawn of time. Or, I guess since we were now doing it, since the literal dawn of time. Myra slept most of the afternoon, Michael wandered through New Orleans numerous churches, and Emily looked through Cain’s photographs until well into the night. I guess it was about 11:30 when Cain stood up, looked at me, and headed towards the door. Myra met me at the door.

“Do you want me to go with you?” she asked.

“No. It’s probably going to be a scene of biblical proportions, if you’ll pardon the pun, and I don’t think the presence of the most recent mother of my child will help soothe the savage breasts of the first mother of my children.”

“You know the quote only has singular breast, right?”

“Yeah, but given the establishments where we’re looking for her, I figured the more the merrier.”I tried to keep it light, but she could see in my eyes that I wasn’t looking forward to this.

“She’ll forgive you. I did.”

“Yeah, but I had only left you for a couple of decades. Multiply that times a hundred or so and that’s the kind of grudge Eve’s toting.”

“It’ll be okay.” she lied.

“I know.” I lied right back, and we shared that rueful smile that people share when they know they’re selling a great big steaming pile, and they know the other one isn’t buying, but it’s what they’re expected to say and do, so they do it anyway.

“Wow. You guys are cute. Aren’t they cute, Cain? Was he this cute with your Mom?” I turned and saw Emily standing next to Cain at the door, a tank top that verged on the obscene stretched across her chest and a tattered pair of jeans tapering down to a pair of bright red cowboy boots.

“What are you wearing? And where do you think you’re going? If you think you’re going with us, particularly dressed like that, you’ve got another think coming young lady.” I only get all Ward Cleaver when I have daughters of a particular age range. Namely from about 6 months to 65 years old.

“They’re called clothes, Dad, and they took the place of fig leaves a while back. And I’m going with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes I am.” she said simply, as though there was no argument even conceivable.

“Emily. How should I best put this? Oh hell no you’re not. I am not taking my youngest child into a strip bar on Bourbon Street at 1:30 in the morning.”

“One: why not? It’s not like it’s the first pair of tits I’ve ever seen. In case you didn’t notice, I have a pair of my own, so they’re less than impressive to me. And Two: you are my father, and the father of the human race, and for that I respect you, but you don’t get to play dad after missing 23 birthdays and then randomly showing up on a stolen Harley in the middle of the afternoon. So pick your jaw up off the floor and let’s roll. I’ve got a feeling you’re going to need me tonight, for moral support if nothing else.” I closed my mouth with an audible snap, and walked over to the door where she stood with Cain.

I looked back at Myra and Michael. Myra was leaning on Cain’s fridge smirking at her precocious daughter, and Michael was sitting in an armchair with an inscrutable expression on his face. I hate inscrutable angels. “You two going to suddenly decide to come along, too?” I asked.

“No thank you, I’ve still got some recovering to do. I’m not as young as some people that were drinking with you two degenerates.”

“I’ll pass. I can happily avoid delving into the absolute gutter of humanity.” With Michael’s endorsement ringing in my ears, we headed out. It was a nice enough night, and Cain and I were big enough to make ourselves not look like prey for anyone with less-than-honorable intentions between his apartment and the ongoing party of Bourbon Street. Big Daddy’s wasn’t the sleaziest place in the Bayou, but it wasn’t exactly a champagne room, either. With a huge sign on the street advertising “LIVE SEX SHOW” and proclaiming it “TOO EXTREME TO SHOW – COME INSIDE” it wasn’t making much happen on the subtle side of life. I downed the last of the mega-beer I had bought from one of the street stalls and followed Cain and Emily inside.

It was decorated in typical strip club chic, dark so you wouldn’t notice the stretch marks and the ocassional needle track, with mutli-colored dark carpet to hide the presence of blood and other fluids. There were a couple of small side stages and one long runway that dominated most of the center of the room. A bouncer who looked like he ate small children with hummus for breakfast stood by the door and checked IDs. I don’t know where Cain got his, but my fake IDs have always been immaculate, and ridiculously expensive. Emily was the only one of us with a real government-issued ID that had her actual birthdate on it, and Bluto spent a lot more time trying to look down her shirt than he did checking her age. We took a table in a corner, and I noticed that Cain made it a point to check for escape routes and sit with his back to a wall when we all sat.

“Paranoid, son?”

“Sometimes it’s a good idea to know where your exits are. Check that – it’s always a good idea to know where your exits are. And a guy I used to play cards with taught me not to sit with my back to a door.”

“Really? You were there? Then?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. Got Hickock droppings all over my favorite jacket. Some things just don’t come out of suede, Pop.”

“What are you boys talking about?” said a voice in my ear. Not a particularly euphonious voice, but obviously female. I looked up to a flat-chested stripper with a face like a horse. Before I could tell her to buzz off, she had wormed her lace teddy-wearing way onto my lap where her bony ass immediately starting to dig deep into my left quadriceps.

“We were just having a little conversation, honey. A private conversation.” I replied, hoping she’d get the hint and find a drunker target. But she was either desperate or brutally dense, and she didn’t budge.

“Well my name’s Sandy. What’s yours?” Horse-faced girl replied, without any inclination to move. I glared daggers at Cain, who was leaning back in his chair quietly smirking at me, and Emily, who was smothering her giggles in a Cosmopolitan. This night was not going well, and it started to spiral absolutely out of control when I heard the DJ announce “AAAANNNNNDDDD NNNNOOOOOOOOWWWWWW, ON OUR MAIN STAGE, PLEEEEEAAAASSSSSEE WELCOME…EEEEEEEEVVVVVVEEEEE!” And with that, the woman I first gave my heart to, the woman I’ve loved since the beginninng of the world, the woman I helped create the human race with, stepped out onto a runway to shake her mostly naked body for an audience of drunken rednecks, swamp rats and frat boy douchebags.
My heart stopped when she stepped out on that runway, and not just because I had seen the first love of my life again after innumerable years. But not to put too fine a point on it, Eve was hot. The years had left us largely untouched, and when she walked out from behind the silver lame shimmery curtain, I went back to the first day I ever saw her. The sun was always shining in the Garden, even when it had to rain, and it was sunny afternoon when she stepped out from behind a tree and said “Adam, I presume?”

“Huh?” I’m always eloquent when surprised.

“You must be Adam.”

“Huh?”

“Well, obviously I’m intended to be the brains of this operation. I’m Eve, and Father sent me here to be your partner.”

“Huh?” This was taking a minute or two to sink in, obviously. It’s not like Eve was the first woman I’d ever seen, or the first woman that had ever been. That would be Lillith, and that didn’t go well. It’s not that Lillith wasn’t perfectly pleasant, but we were never partners in any real sense of the word. We occupied the same space, but we weren’t ever what you could call together.

“Father made me from one of your ribs, working under the assumption that we’d be closer that way if I were more a part of you. We’ll see. So far it looks like he took a fair chunk of your brains with the rib, even though I’m pretty sure they don’t share the same geography, as it were.”

“Look, um…Eve?”

“Yes. Eve.”

“Ok. Look, Eve. I’m sure you’re nice enough, and ‘m sure Father thinks that he knows best, but I just got out of a thing with this woman named Lillith, and I’m not really feeling the whole ‘man and woman thing’ right now. It’s nothing personal, but…” I trailed off when I saw the look in her eyes. It was the look you get when you drop your kid off at kindergarten for the first time. There was hurt mixed with shock and loss all wrapped up in a big bundle of betrayal, like the whole world has suddenly turned topsy-turvy, and not in the good kind of roller-coaster that goes through a loop kid of way.

“You don’t love me?” And those eyes brimmed with tears, and a lock of her blonde hair trailed out from behind her left ear, and she started to turn away from me, shoulders slumped like she’d just lost her only friend. Which I suppose he had, even though we’d just met.

“Wait.” I stopped her more with words than with any touch, although I did reach for her arm. “Why don’t we just sit here and get to know each other a little bit. Tell me something about yourself.”

“Well, there’s not a lot to tell since I’m about seven hours old, but I’ll sit with you and you can tell me about yourself, and this place, and all these creatures that are all around.” So we did. We sat on a rock on top of a hill and I pointed to the giraffe, and the lion, and the dog and horse and kiwi (she found the kiwi and playpus particularly amusing, and used to always giggle when the kiwi would waddle past).

We sat there for the rest of the day as I taught her the names of things, and she laughed at my silliness when I tried to ride a hippopotamus or climb a tree after a squirrel, and I found her to be witty, and open and completely giving of herself. She laughed whenever she felt like laughing, and was so moved at the beauty of the sunset that she wept, big tears rolling down her cheeks to nestle in the hollow of her throat and collarbone while she grinned a grin that kept the sun up a couple extra minutes just to bask in her light.

So yeah, we fell in love. I guess we invented it, at least among mortals. The seraphim had a whole different level of love working, what with their nigh-infinite intellect and capacity for emotion and all. But we fell in love, and we had babies, and then we had an unfortunate interaction with a certain seraphim with ambition who had managed to lose a celestial corporate takeover bid and develop a reputation as the most disgruntled of employees. You all know how that turned out. Then there was the whole Cain inventing murder episode, and things spiraled out of control between Eve and I, and that all culminated in a certain level of butterflies in my stomach as I sat in a relatively disgusting bar in New Orleans watching my ultimate first wife take her top off for dollar bills.

I should have known that there was going to be trouble. I mean, really, nothing had gone well for me since I sat down at the blackjack table in Vegas, and since I’d gone a whopping 48 hours without hitting anyone I should have known that it was too good to last. But I’m really not that smart, so I was somewhat blindsided when everything went all pear-shaped on me.

It started in the middle of Eve’s second song, by which time she had shed her top and was teasing the removal of her oh-so-brief bottoms and writhing on the edge of the stage for a passel of thick-necked fratboys in cutoff Dockers and backwards LSU caps. Eve’s first song had been some mind-numbingly fast rave thing that left her half-naked and the audience whipped into a frenzy, so when the music shifted to Chris Isaak’s Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing they were at a fever pitch.

It was about halfway through the song when the first fratboy made his move. Eve was on her knees at the edge of the stage shaking her boobs in his face while he stuck a dollar in his garter when he reached up and grabbed a handful of breast. Eve slapped his hand, waved a playful “no-no” finger in his face, and spun away to work the other side of the runway. Unfortunately for so many of us, the fratboy decided that he wasn’t done with Eve, and he grabbed the back of her thong and yanked her backwards toward him. Eve whirled on the fratboy ready to knock him senseless, but one of his buddies grabbed her first in mid-swing.

The mood of the crowd turned ugly then, and I looked over at Cain. “Keep Emily out of this,” I yelled at him as I flung myself into the fast-developing fray. One of the bouncers had a fratboy in a headlock, but two of them were still pawing at Eve, and she couldn’t get free enough to get a good swing at them. I caught one of them by the shoulder and spun him around, dropping under his roundhouse elbow and coming up with a shot to the groin. What can I say, I’m a lover, not a fighter. So I cheat.

The first fratboy went down like 250 lbs. of dead weight, which at that moment he was, and I clocked the other one behind one ear with a beer bottle. Eve’s back was to me as his grip loosened, and I went for the dramatic pose, taking the beer I’d just clobbered the kid with and turning it up, bringing it down with a grin just as Eve made it back up on the stage and to her feet. She looked down at me as I lowered the bottle and her eyes went wide. I smiled my best saucy smile up at her (and my best saucy smile is pretty good these days) and said nonchalantly, “Hi Eve. Nice thong.”

I’m not sure what reaction I was expecting, but a crazed shriek wasn’t anywhere on the list. I saw a light in her eyes that I was not in any was happy about, and was just bringing my hands up when one of her 4” platform shoes caught me square on the tip of my jaw, lifting me off my feet and depositing me, unconscious, in the center of a table occupied by three cloud storage salesmen from Toledo. The last thing I saw before I went completely out was a convention badge reading “Stewart” in 18-point font, and a pocket protector.

“Well, I suppose that went as well as I expected,” were the first words I heard upon waking. I took a moment to examine my surroundings before I opened my eyes. Head still attached, check. Extremities mobile, check. Lying on some ludicrously hard surface, check. LOUD wherever I was, check. I decided that since I was still alive, I may as well let everyone know it. I opened my eyes to see Cain and Emily standing over me, backlight by pink neon.

“Where am I?” I asked woozily.

“Really? Isn’t that just a stereotype? Do people really ask that?” Emily asked.

“They do when they wake up someplace that’s different from the place where they were last conscious. When you take into account the last time Poppa here was awake he was learning to fly, and doing a poor job of it, it makes a little more sense.”

“Shut your piehole, smartass. Emily, where am I?” I repeated, somewhat less woozily as the pain in my head and jaw started to blossom.

“Bourbon Street. Or rather, the sidewalk in front of Big Daddy’s. You were thrown out. Literally.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” I groaned and weaved a little as I started to get up.

“Whoa, tiger, where do you think you’re going?” Cain caught my arm and kept me from falling off the sidewalk into the throngs of people tossing beads and flashing bits of flesh.

“Back in there. We gotta get Eve.” I might have been concussed, but I was hanging on to that thought with a determination that made me
a little proud. Even after getting impromptu flying lessons thanks to a kick in the gob, I still remembered my primary objective. Kirk would have been proud.

“Wow. I obviously kicked you harder than I thought. I’m right here, asshole. Now before you try, and I mean try, to go back in there and get the shit beat out of yourself by Clarence, who is a very nice man and does not deserve any trouble from meddling immortals, why don’t you tell me exactly what the hell you want?” I wish I could say that her voice sounded like a choir of angels, but aside from the fact that I’d never been around angels in enough number to make up much more than a barbershop quartet, the sad fact is, it didn’t. It sounded more like really pissed off fingernails down a chalkboard. Only shrill.

“Hello, Eve. Nice to see you. Nice kick.” I said as I allowed Cain to turn me around and face Eve, who was leaning against a window into a shop selling Father knows what. She had obviously taken the time to dress, such as it was. She had tied her hair back into a ponytail, and wore cowboy boots even more garish than Emily’s that led to black fishnets criss-crossing her legs up to a black leather miniskirt. Ever the ironic, she had on a “Got Christ?” tank top that I was pretty sure didn’t look like that in Clerks 2. At least Jason Mewes had never filled one out like that. Apparently Eve only wore a bra when she intended to take it off soon, because nothing was evident under the tank top but Eve. Damn, she looked good. Trashy, but good.

“Thanks, I practiced for years just in case you decided to drop back into my life. Now, What. Do. You. Want? Asshole.” She appended just for good measure.

“It’s a long story. Could you just come back to Cain’s place with us and have a little coffee and Advil cocktail?”

“No. I don’t think I’m going anywhere but home. And you’re not invited. And then tomorrow I’m going to wake up, and I’m going to leave New Orleans, a city that I quite like, thank you very much, and I’m going to have to go looking for someplace else to live. Someplace with a few less assholes. Or really, just ONE less asshole.” She was starting to find her rhythm, and I knew that in a about two and a half minutes she was going to reach deeper into her vocabulary than just “asshole” for descriptions of me.

Usually, when faced with a woman in the throes of this type of blind, unreasoning hatred, there are a couple of things I try to accomplish. The first is simply to keep her from killing me, or inflicting a fair amount of pain in the attempt. The second is to keep her out of the public eye enough to keep the authorities from becoming involved. And the third is to reach some type of amicable exit strategy that doesn’t involve me being chased by large portions of a father’s segment of the Roman Legions (Yes, it happened. Yes, it was my fault. Yes, the Roman Legions can run very fast. Yes, being staked down over an anthill with honey spread over your genitalia is very uncomfortable. And most importantly, yes, everything grew back just fine. Sometimes I think that Joss Whedon wrote more parts of my life than Moses did.). In this case I was going to have to make do with the first two, so I did something to Eve that I had never done before, and there wasn’t much left that didn’t involve rendered animal fat and a blender. I used The Voice.

“No you will NOT. You WILL come with us and you WILL hear what we have to say and you WILL fulfill your duty to the Father and to all of these, our children.” It hurt my back a little to stand at my full height, and I was pretty sure there was broken highball glass wrapped around a rib somewhere, but I held myself upright and locked eyes with Eve. For the first time in thousands of years of our running into each other and having these little confrontations, she blinked first. She looked down and away, and I think I saw a glimmer of real surprise in her eyes.

She stood there for a moment, and then I saw her eyes spark back to life. She threw her head back, stuck her jaw out and got ready to unleash an absolute torrent of bile in my direction when Emily stepped in.

“Please?” That’s it. One word. All she did was look up into the face of her ultimate grandmother and say, in a very small and innocent voice, “Please?”

“Well…shit. Alright, I’ll go hear you out, but don’t think we’re finished, asshole.” She picked up a bag that looked big enough to carry a sawed-off shotgun, and started off down the street.

“I’ve never thought we were finished, Eve. Never.” I murmured as we followed her, my arm over Cain’s shoulder as my balance slowly returned.

Chapter 4 (or whatever)

“Oh Hell, no!” Was the first thing I heard as Eve preceded me into Cain’s apartment. She whirled on her heel and ran smack into my chest as she made for a hasty exit. “I am NOT going to be in the same room as that self-righteous son of a bitch, and that’s all there is to it. I don’t know what kind of shit you think you were gonna pull, Adam, but I will have nothing to do with that angelic motherfucker. Period.” She continued to try to push past me as her diatribe bounced off the walls, and finally I bent at the knees, put my shoulder into her gut, and carried her into the apartment like a bag of dog food. A kicking, cursing, spitting bag of dog food. I deposited her in an armchair across the room from Michael, and stood between the two of them.

Eve quickly sprung up out of the chair, and I just as quickly pushed her back into it. “Sit.” I ordered, and when she looked around and took stock the situation, she stayed where I had put her.

“Michael, maybe this would be a good time for you to take a walk.” I suggested.

“Yeah, like off a levee.” Eve spat.

“Behave. Now, like I was saying, this might go more smoothly if we just ease into things and bring you in at the end. Whattaya say?” I smiled at Michael in my best let’s all be buddies smile, and was honestly amazed when he looked at me and smirked a little.

“No. I think I’ll just sit here and watch the show.” He said, crossing his legs at knee and settling back into the sofa.

“What?” Once again with my eloquence.

“I don’t get to observe honest human interactions that often, and this promises to be quite enlightening. I’ll stay.” He leaned back and sipped from a glass of ice water on a side table.

“You’re a dick, Michael. Did I ever mention that?” I said as I turned back to Eve and tried to gather my thoughts.

“Now, Eve. I’d like for you to just hear me out before you react, and especially before you do anything rash or particularly hard on the furnishings.”

“Thanks, Pop. Some of this stuff is hard to replace.” Cain said as he threw a couple of extra deadbolts.

“Alright. I’ll listen. But before we get going, can I ask a couple of questions? And I’d really like a beer.” Eve said sulkily. Cain went to the fridge, a nice vintage number with magnets on the front from hundreds of different cities all around the world. I guess a body needs some way to track the travels.

“Sure, Eve. What would you like to know?” I said, sitting on the bench in front of the upright piano Cain had along one wall. I kept a position near the door in case Eve decided to bolt, and between Michael and Cain, they had the French doors out to the balcony covered.

“First, who’s the kid?” she started as she cracked open a Blackened Voodoo on the edge of an end table that had obviously seen such use on more than one occasion.

“My name is Emily, it’s nice to meet you.” Em held out her hand and crossed to her, but Eve just stared past her at me.

“Who. Is. The. Kid?” she repeated levelly.

“Emily is my youngest daughter. But I’m pretty sure you knew that already.” I answered, looking Eve straight in the eyes. I figured this would come up, and we might as well get it out of the way.

“Well, it’s so good to see that I’m remembered. No offense, Emily, I’m sure you’re as nice a person as you could be, given your parentage.” She shook Em’s hand and the shaken girl returned to sit next to her mother on a love seat.

“I never forgot you, no matter how hard you tried to make me.” I said.

“But you didn’t hesitate to knock up a floozy in every town where you spent more than fifteen minutes, did you? Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t your sole responsibility to propagate the species?” She was starting to get nasty, and I knew that the venom would really start to flow in a few minutes, so I made an effort to abate as much bloodshed as possible.

“Emily, would you and your mother please excuse us for a few minutes? Eve, Cain and I have some things that we need to discuss, and you might not want to be around to hear them.” I knew the second the words left my mouth that I had made a tactical error, not my first of the evening.

“So this is the latest floozy? And what is your name, dear?” Eve turned her attention to Myra, and all my senses went on red alert.

“I’m Myra. And while I might be the latest, I think the one in the sequined thong might think twice before she calls anyone a floozy.” Myra crossed the room to Eve and extended her hand. Eve stood to take it, and looked Myra up and down slowly as the two women evaluated each other like prizefighters at a weigh-in.

I looked over at Cain, who shrugged as if to say, “I didn’t sleep with either of them, what do you want me to do?”

“Touché. I like this one, Adam. She’s got claws of her own.” Eve smiled at me and I suddenly thought I knew what that canary felt like when it caught sight of the cat a second too late.

“And I’m not afraid to use them, sweetie. Now you might have had him first, but I had him last. And if you want to exercise some prior claim, we might need to step outside and have a little discussion.” Myra looked Eve right in the eye and didn’t flinch. I’d never had two women fight over me before, and thought that might be interesting, if hard on the décor.

Eve looked Myra up and down once more and let out a long laugh before pulling her into a big sisterly hug. “Prior claim? Good Father, honey, I’ve been done with that one since before your ancestors crossed the friggin’ land bridge! He’s all yours, although why you want him is beyond me!” All my thoughts of the two of them in a wading pool full of pudding vanished with Eve’s laugh, but on the bright side, no one was likely to get kicked in the head while she was amused.

“Well. I’m glad we got that situated.” Myra said, looking a little confused as she sat back down next to Emily.

“You said a couple of questions, Mom. What was the other one?” Cain interjected before the evening could get any more surreal.

“You. How is it that the two of you are in the same room and no one is bleeding from every orifice?” She asked, looking from Cain to me and back again.

“We talked. A lot. Then we got drunk together. Then I think we might have gotten in a bar fight, or played pool, I can’t remember which. Then we drank some more. By the time we got sober, we were alright again.” I said. She looked at me for a long moment, realized that it was just stupid enough to be true, and took another long pull off her beer.

“I bet I’m gonna need another one of these before you get started on the rest of it.” She said to Cain, who went to the fridge for another round, and brought out a bottle of tequila and a couple of limes to go with it.

“Alright, spill.” She said after we all did a shot and tossed our limes over the balcony rail. Well, all of us except Michael, of course, who had another glass of wine. Prig.

“So I was playing blackjack in Las Vegas when all of a sudden…” I started, and recounted the whole deal to Eve, from my hauling ass out of Vegas to meeting Myra again, to punching Michael in the nose, to Cain and I trying to kill each other, to Emily calling us on our shit, to getting to New Orleans. There were a few moments where I was pretty sure she was going to try to kill Michael, and at least one or two real tears throughout the story, but we got through it without any broken furniture or bloodshed, which told me I was getting better at this sort of thing. The sun was coming up when I finished our little tale, and Eve looked up at me with eyes that had seen centuries of sunrises and said to me “Now what?”

“What do you mean, now what?” I asked. I was a little confused from the booze, the late (or early) hour, and the kick to the head.

“Now what do you want me to do?” she asked.

“I want you to go with us to find this guy, whoever he is, and be there when the Choice is made.” I was a little puzzled by her question, frankly.

“No.”

“Huh?”

“No. I’m not going. It was great to see you again. Well, not really, but that’s what we’re supposed to say when we see someone we don’t like to see because they dredge up too many bad memories, so I’ll go ahead and succumb to the social mores that I live nearest.” She said as she picked up her bag and headed towards the door.

“Wait a minute. You can’t just leave!” I grabbed her arm as she passed me and she whirled on me.

“Oh yes I can. Remember, I’m the fucking poster child for free will. I’m the one who made the last big Choice, and I’m not going to pass that torch to some poor schlub who has no idea what it’s all about. I can live with what I’ve done. Father knows I’ve had plenty of practice, but I’m not going to put that on anyone else. And if you think, after all these years, that I’m going to go dancing to the tune of some hoity-toity angel again, maybe you never knew me after all.” With that, she tore her arm loose from my grasp and headed out the door with the morning sun making a golden silhouette of her hair.

I watched her go, again, and felt the same sense of loss that I had all those years ago when she looked me straight in the face and told me she never wanted to see me again. She walked out in a blaze of golden hair and sunlight then, too. Eve always knew how to make an exit. I leaned on the doorframe as she walked down the stairs, and I felt a hand in mine. I looked back at Emily as she pulled me into the apartment.

“It’ll be okay, Dad. She’ll be back.” She soothed.

“I don’t think so. You don’t know her like I do.”

“I know more than you think. And I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen the last of Eve.” I just patted her on the cheek, kissed the top of her head, and went back to Cain’s guest room where Myra lay curled up in a sheet. I closed the door, turned on the ceiling fan, stripped down to my boxers, and lay down beside her for a few hours sleep. She grabbed my hand as I draped an arm over her side, pulled it into both of her hands, and wrapped herself around my arm. I smiled a little as I drifted off to sleep.

I love the dreams about The Garden. It’s the only time I get to go back there, and those are the dreams I hate to wake up from. In this one, everybody was there. Me, Eve, Cain, Abel, Myra, Emily, all my children and wives from thousands of years, and all of Eve’s husbands and babies, too. I was sitting under The Tree watching Emily pose while Cain painted her portrait. She was sitting on a rock, barefoot with shorts and a t-shirt on, with a flower stuck behind one ear. Cain looked more at peace than I’d seen him in many years while he mixed paints on a little palette and dabbed a little yellow here, a little blue there, a swath of green over there. Abel stood behind his brother watching proudly, the love he had for his baby brother shining in his eyes. Eve lay on her stomach next to me, resting her head on her folded arms while she twisted flowers into a garland. We were at peace, all of us a huge ridiculous family, and even Lucky wasn’t looking to spoil anything. He just sat on a tree limb watching the children play. It was like his rebellion never happened, like Eve and I never ate the fruit, like nobody ever made any Choices.

Of course, just as I reached down beside me to take a drink from the frosty glass I had resting on the ground, I heard a voice.

“Alright, Sleeping Beauty. Time to make the donuts.” Sometimes having kids is a pain in the ass. Now try having kids that are thousands of years old. The whole respecting your elders thing goes in the shitter when your one of the oldest people in the world.

“Fuck off, Cain, we’re sleeping.” I mumbled.

“Unless you’ve got a mouse in your underpants, Poppa, there’s no ‘we.’ And since you’re swearing at me, you’re obviously not sleeping.” My smartass kid replied. Correct that. My eldest smartass kid. All my kids have had a wicked wit that I attribute to Eve. After all, that type of cynicism could never have come from yours truly. I then realized that the little shit was right, I was alone in the bed. That’s never an ideal waking situation, but it becomes even less so when you didn’t go to sleep alone, and had no real reason to anticipate waking up that way. I looked around the room for Myra, and heard the squeal of a water pipe as the shower kicked on to reassure me that I hadn’t been abandoned.

“Alright, darling child of mine, I am indeed awake. Now what can I do for you?” I rolled over to face Cain, who stood in the doorway already dressed for the day. He had gone native upon returning to New Orleans and stood in his flip-flops, white linen pants and a beige linen shirt. With his hair smoothed back into a loose ponytail at the base of his neck he looked like he could have stepped out of an Anne Rice novel. I envied him his sense of style, just a little. I’ve always leaned a little more towards biker chic myself, and I probably looked like Sam Elliott after a three-week bender given the few hours of sleep I’d grabbed.

“Well, Paternal One, I thought it might be a good idea for you to accompany me to meet mother for breakfast.” Cain replied, and there was something in his eyes that told me I needed to get dressed, and pronto.

“Where is she?” I asked as I pulled on pants and caught the t-shirt that Cain tossed to me. I reached into my bag for some deodorant and paused for a moment before I went over and knocked on the bathroom door.

“Just a minute.” I heard Myra call out from inside. I went in anyway, and closed the door behind me as I thought I heard Cain’s muffled reply. I stuck my head back outside the bathroom and said “Excuse me?”

“I said, she’s in jail. And we’re going to go bail her out. Now brush your teeth, your breath is peeling the paint.” I ducked back into the bathroom where Myra was just turning off the water.

“Adam, dear, I know we were close a while back, but do I really need to clarify that ‘just a minute’ does not mean ‘come right in and watch me shower?’” She said as she dried off. I did take a moment to notice that she really was a well-assembled woman as I squirted toothpaste all over the faucet.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She laughed as she said it and I remembered what drew me to her in the first place. Aside from the obvious attractions, all of which were on display at the moment, I loved her laugh.

“I’m sorry, Myra, I’ve gotta brush my teeth and run. Apparently Eve’s in trouble and Cain says we can get her to talk to us if we bail her out.” I brushed my teeth and tongue, and headed back out into the bedroom. I pulled on my boots and was just heading out when I heard Myra behind me.

“Take Emily.”

“I don’t know how good an idea that is, Myra. Eve’s pretty pissed at me for a lot of things, and she can be pretty nasty.” I started.

“Look. We all know how this works. I make a logical suggestion, you make unreasoned objections, and eventually Emily and Cain chime in, with the odd annoying aside from the angelic asshole on the sofa, and you end up doing what I say anyway. Since we’re short on time, why don’t we just pretend to go through all the tedious bits and skip right to part where you do it my way.”

“I make it a point never to argue with a MILF in a towel, so you win.” Cain snickered at that, Emily blew orange juice through her nose and Myra blushed all the way down to the tops of her breasts, which was where the towel started. She flipped me the bird and closed the bedroom door after herself. I headed for the door, and said to Emily, “Come along kiddo, you know she’s right.”

“When did you make up that rule?” Cain asked as we headed down the stairs.

“About ninety seconds ago.” I said.

“Ahem, Adam?” I heard from the balcony as we went out onto the street. I looked up and saw Michael leaning over the railing.

“Yeah, Michael. What is it?”

“What’s a milf?” and Emily, Cain and I walked down the street, laughing our asses off at the perplexed seraphim.

It was noon by the time we got to the police station, and the desk sergeant was glad to see us. Or more to the point, he was glad to see anyone that would agree to take Eve off their hands. We paid her fine, collected her belongings, including that ridiculously large bag, and waited on the sidewalk for her. It took about twenty minutes, but finally she tromped down the steps, grabbed her bag from Cain, and started walking off down the street. “Thanks for the bail money, kiddo.” She tossed over her left shoulder without breaking stride.

We caught up to her after about a dozen paces, and I blocked her path on the sidewalk. She stepped around me into the street, and kept on going. After a few fruitless attempts to stop her, I stopped and said “Go ahead. Keep running, Eve. But no matter where you go, there you are. And you can’t outrun you, no matter how far you go.” She stopped, and her head dropped. She slowly turned, and walked back to me.

She got right up in my face and said, in a voice dripping with chill, “Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck your archangel, fuck your new kid, fuck your latest love story, fuck your Choice, fuck living forever, fuck the rest of humanity, if that’s even what we are anymore, and fuck the Father.”

I didn’t know my hand had moved until her head rocked back with the force of me slapping her. She raised her hand to retaliate and I caught her wrist. I leaned in a got close enough that I could feel her breath on my face and I said in a low voice “You can say whatever you want about me, you can even talk shit about Myra and Emily. They can take care of themselves. But you will not disrespect our Father in my presence. No matter how you may feel about the mess we got ourselves into, no matter how much help we may have had from that douchebag angel, he is still our Father, our Creator, and he deserves your respect. “ I kept right on going without giving her a minute to get a word in.

“Now get your head out of your ass for a minute. There is something going on here that is bigger than both of us. I don’t understand it completely, and I’m not going to pretend for a minute that I trust Michael, but right now, we need him. I’ve got a real bad feeling about whatever this Choice is, and if we’re gonna get through this, I need people with me that I can count on. And you’ve always been at the top of that list. No matter what’s happened over the years, I know deep down you still care about me, and I will always, always care about you. And that’s the kind of backup we need.”

She stood there for a long moment before she looked up at me, nodded, then said to Cain “I’m gonna head back to my place to pick up some things, and some different clothes. I can catch a cab back to your place, or you can wait for me while I pack. I can call in to work and tell them I’m quitting. They won’t miss me, always said I was high maintenance.”

“You? Can’t imagine.” I said, grinning at her. She punched me lightly on the arm and said “I’ll see you back at Cain’s. And tell the floozy I’m sorry I was a bitch.”

“I’ll pass the word.” She walked off up the street and I turned back to the others.

“Do you think she’ll show?” Cain asked.

“Yes.” Emily didn’t have the slightest hesitation in her voice, and I had learned to trust her when she used that tone. So I nodded to Cain and we headed back to his apartment.

As we walked, Cain looked over at me and asked “How are you set for cash, Dad?”

“I’ve got about six hundred on me. Why?” I replied.

“Because all my ready cash just went to pay off a drunk and disorderly charge on Mommie Dearest, and since I share your distaste for traditional financial institutions, I have a modicum of concern as to how we’re going to finance our little world-saving endeavor.”

“Hmm. That’s a good point. Em, I don’t suppose your mother won the lottery since I skipped town, did she?”

“Yeah, of course she did. That’s why we were both waiting tables. To keep it real.” She made some type of odd gangster hand signal, then laughed at the confused look on my face.

“So how much money do we have, then?” I asked her.

“Well, there’s your six hundred, plus about four hundred between mom and me, and Cain’s now broke, so that just leaves anything Michael and Eve have.”

“Since Michael has been an incorporeal ball of self-righteous energy for most of his life, I’m guessing there’s not much earning potential on his resume. So that leaves Eve. And that means we’re screwed.” I answered.

“What makes you say that?” Emily asked.

“Mom doesn’t believe in money. She keeps only the bare minimum to support herself and gives the rest away, usually to the most deplorable people she can find. She might have fifty bucks on her, and that would be from last night’s lap dances. There’s not going to be much in the rainy day fund at Casa Eve.” Cain answered.

“Alright then, I guess it’s time to make money the old-fashioned way.” I declared.

“Bash people in the head with a rock and take it from their still-warm corpses?” Cain asked.

“Tacky, son. Really, really tacky.” I glared at him.

“Sorry, Poppa, old habits die hard. So if larceny and skullduggery wasn’t what you had in mind, how exactly do you plan to fund the next leg of our road trip?” He asked.

“The same way I’ve supported myself for the past twenty years. Blackjack. Come on kiddies, Poppa’s gonna take you to the casino. If you’re real nice, I’ll give you twenty bucks to play the slots with.” I headed down to Canal Street and turned left towards the casino, my two children in tow. I looked back at Emily “By the way, did you bring ID?”

“Yes, Dad.” She sighed in the tone that twenty-something girls have used with their ridiculous fathers ever since I first had a twenty-something daughter.

The casino in New Orleans is just like most of them, loud, garish and a little depressing. It’s no wonder Lucky feels so at home in them. I wonder what it says about me that I also feel very at home among the dropouts, the degenerates and the hopeless dreamers. But I’ve always like blackjack, and I count cards just well enough to generally make a little money without getting noticed by the floor guys or the eye in the sky. I sat down at a low-limit table and settled in to a nice six-deck shoe. Most people think you can’t count a six-deck shoe, but the reality is that it’s just a little harder. If you’re patient, you can figure it out. If you’re immortal, patience is one thing you’ve got in spades. The kids wandered around the slot machines for while as I got my groove started. I was up about a hundred bucks at a $15 table when Emily came back.

“Gimme a couple hundred bucks.” She said, holding out her hand.

“And why, pray tell, would I want to do that?” I responded without touching either the chips in front of me or the cash in my pocket.

“Because you’re taking too long and I can make us a lot more money a lot more quickly. So gimme $300.”

“How do you plan to make significantly more money than me, faster than me, with half our remaining money?” I was a little concerned. She had an odd look about her, not like she had a gambling bug, but like she knew she had an edge. It worries me when people think they have an edge over a casino, especially one that’s as close to water as that one was. I’ve seen people frantically trying to learn to swim after big winning sessions in casinos, but it can be difficult to learn new things with you hands and feet tied together. I ended up very soggy in that little adventure and didn’t relish an opportunity to repeat it. It’s a lot harder to find thugs in casinos nowadays, since they’re all run my huge multinational conglomerates, but there’s still the occasional neckless twit rolling around, and if I could avoid any interaction with them, I would.

“Poker.” She looked up at me and when I didn’t fork over any cash, she went on. “I’m a good poker player, and I read people very, very well. So give me one buyin and I’ll make us some serious cash. I’ve been watching, and these games are ridiculously juicy. It’s almost like these guys want to give their money away.” Now I’ve played a little poker, and I’ve played once or twice in the Delta, and the boys down there like to gamble. And they would never think that a little girl like Emily could hold her own, so even if she didn’t have a somewhat amazing ability to know what people were thinking and feeling, she’d probably have an edge. Couple that with her mildly disturbing insight, and I did what any right-thinking father would do. I gave her the money.

“Thanks. Now stay here. If you’re there with me it’ll singe my groove.” She walked off, and I saw her tying her hair up in pigtails as she went. Singe her groove? Really?

“They grow up fast, don’t they Poppa?” Cain was in the seat next to me at the table. I hadn’t noticed him there before and wasn’t sure how much of the exchange he’d witnessed.

“Yeah. They sure do. Did you ever have any?” I realized how little I really knew about my son, what with that whole wanting to murder each other for millennia thing getting in the way.

“A few. I had a few early, but they all bore The Mark on their foreheads, so I waited until after the carpenter did his thing to have any more. You know what’s funny? After they killed him, none of my children since had The Mark.
Funny, huh?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have thought he could have affected us, what with us being so much older than him and all.”

“I know. But it really did seem like something changed after his time. Like Father hit the reset button or something.” I’d never pegged Cain for the philosophical type, but people can change in 5,000 years I guess. We sat there for an hour or two pushing chips back and forth. I wasn’t counting cards much anymore, just chatting with Cain about our lives through the years. Basic blackjack strategy will keep you from getting in too much trouble, and after a while doesn’t really require any thought. I managed to get lucky a few times and pick up a couple hundred dollars when I realized that Emily hadn’t come back for any more money.

“Wanna go check on your sister?” I asked Cain.

“I thought she didn’t want you to singe her groove?” Cain asked with a smirk.

“Really? Out of all the people, do you think I would singe a girl’s groove. C’mon.” I colored up to a purple and a couple of black chips and walked over towards the poker room. Poker room is something of a misnomer, it’s more a slightly enclosed area with a rail around it where addicts can go smoke.

It took a little bit of eyeballing from the rail, but we finally caught sight of Emily, and when we did, Cain and I exchanged what could most charitably be called shocked glances. She was sitting at one end of the table, the only girl in a sea of fat, sweaty men, and she had a wall of chips in front of her that was impressive in its size alone, much less in the fact that it was made up of mostly red and green chips. I made a quick guess and figured she had close to $1500 sitting in front of her. She saw us watching, folded her hand and sashayed over to the rail to give her brother a big hug and me a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey boys, how did you do?” She asked with an altogether impertinent smile.

“We made a little. Looks like you hit a nice little lucky streak yourself, sweetheart.” I replied cautiously. I wanted to know what she was up to, but damned if I was going to give her the satisfaction of asking.

“I’ve had worse days.” She answered with a twinkle in her eye. She knew I wasn’t going to be able to resist asking, and as a matter of fact, I wasn’t.

“Where did you get all that money?” I finally blurted out.

“It’s the funniest thing, Daddy. When you have the best hand, they give you all the chips in the middle of the table. And if you put all your chips in the middle, and you have the best hand, you don’t just get your chips back, you get everybody else’s chips too! Isn’t that fun!” She even squealed a little at the end. I felt ill.

“Where did you learn to play poker?” Cain asked.

“Now, big brother, don’t worry. I can teach you if you want. Daddy, where did you pick me and Mama up?”

“Texas.”

“And what’s the name of the game we’re playing?”

“Texas Hold’em.”

“Now doesn’t it stand to reason that a girl who grew up in Texas, and happened to have been raised next to a bar, might have learned a little about poker?” She kept up the sweetness and light demeanor, which I think made it all the worse.

“So how much do you have?” I finally asked.

“About sixteen hundred dollars. The three hundred you gave me was seed money, and as soon as I could double that, I took a seat in a juicy 2/5 game. I’m gonna pick up another decent pot or two and then hit up the Pot Limit Omaha game they’ve got over in the back corner. It’s an uncapped game and the three seat’s throwing money away like a Catholic priest on a Bangkok bender, while the seven seat has had about seventeen Crown and Cokes and is falling asleep between hands. As long as I stay out of the way of the four and six seats, I should be okay. I can’t tell if they’re playing partners or just locals that don’t see any need to tangle with each other, but either way they aren’t the soft spots at the table. I’ll avoid them unless I’ve got the mortal nuts, and I figure they’ll take a shot or two at me because I’m a girl and then they’ll go back to the easy pickings themselves.” Her whole body language changed when she went on this description of the table. It was like a general talking about an opposing army’s strengths and weaknesses. And never once did she look back at the table to make sure she was talking about the right people. It was, to put it mildly, the damndest thing I’d ever seen.

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand a damn word you said, Baby Sister, and I’m real sure I can’t afford any poker lessons from you.” Cain said with more than a little awe in his voice.

“Well, are you about ready to roll? We’ve got about two grand between us now, and that’s enough to make some headway before we need to reload our funds. We might even have enough to get us all the way through this mess, wherever that is.” I was not very comfortable with some of the looks we were getting. Not that they were threatening looks, more like Emily was a piece of meat, and I get squirrelly where my girl children are concerned.

“Come back in two, two and a half hours. I’m just about done with this table, but it’ll take a couple of good hands at the next to get me where I want to be before we head out. And besides, you never leave while the game is good.” She turned to go back to the table and I grabbed her elbow and pulled her back, hard.

“Where did you hear that phrase?” I asked in a low, very serious tone. All the levity went out of her when she looked up into my eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she actually looked afraid of me. And frankly, I didn’t know better, and she probably was afraid of me. I loosened my grip on her arm but stayed right down in her face. “Who told you that line about never leave when the game is good?”

“A..a guy. He used to come in the diner. He taught me how to play cards. He’d flirt with Mom and play cards with me in one of the booths after school.”

“What was his name?” I kept my voice down but she could see in my eyes that something was going on.

“Luke. Why?”

“Nothing.” I tried to force my face back to normal, but could tell I wasn’t doing a very good job. “Nothing. It’s just that’s a phrase I heard a long time ago, but it’s been years, and I’m sure it’s just part of the vernacular now.” I was lying through my teeth and she knew it, but she could tell that I wasn’t going to come across with any truth right then. “Go on back to your game.”

“Are you sure? You wanna tell me what’s got you so spooked?” She asked. “Besides, now that you’ve got me rattled, I’m gonna have to fold every hand for the next orbit to get my head back in the game.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. It’s nothing, really. Go on back to slaying the redneck dragons and we’ll be back in a couple hours.”

“Yeah, go rob the poor unsuspecting swamp rats, Baby Sister. Me and the old man are gonna go grab a bite and play a little more blackjack.” Cain put an arm around my shoulders and steered me towards the buffet. As soon as he saw Emily take her seat again, he whispered fiercely in my ear “Exactly what the hell do you think you were doing?”

We got a booth a little separate from the rest of the buffet and sat. I downed a Coke in one quick gulp and once the waitress was headed off for my refill I leaned forward. “You know who her poker lessons came from?”

“Yeah, the Morningstar.”

“Yeah. Exactly. That son of a bitch has been hanging around my daughter and I want to know why. Wait a minute. That was supposed to be a rhetorical question. How did you know who her ‘Luke’ was?” I leaned back as my son took a moment to figure out the best way to tell his story.

“Remember when I mentioned not liking to sit with my back to a door?” He started.

“Yeah, you said you were in Deadwood when Hickock got shot.”

“Yeah. I was sitting across from him at the table, and probably was about to lose my ass, because my two pair wasn’t as good as his when McCall came in and shot him.”

“What does that have to do with the Morningstar?”

“He was there, too.”

I sat for a moment digesting. I knew Lucky kept tabs on me, and it stood to reason that he had kept an eye on Eve and Cain, too. What I didn’t understand was why Cain had been playing cards with him, and said as much.

“Because we were making money, Pop. We were hustling mining camps for their claims in card games.”

“With Lucypher? What kind of stupid shit were you up to, son?” I started to stand, but sat down at the look in Cain’s eyes. It was a cross between shame and fear, with more than a little resentment thrown in, and a lot of it was directed at me.

“Really? Who was I supposed to pal around with, Dad?” The emphasis on the last word was heavy with sarcasm, and I suppose it was only to be expected. “I was thousands of years removed from any paternal influence, I had murdered my closest relative and best friend, and Mom was in the middle of one her nuttier periods. Besides, Lucien and I had plenty in common.”

“Lucien?”

“Yeah, that’s what he called himself then. Nobody in their right mind would play cards with a guy named Lucky, and Lucypher was a little blatant.”

“And what in the hell, no pun intended, do you think you have in common with Lucypher?” I was trying to keep my voice down in case the octogenarians sharing the buffet with us weren’t as deaf as I thought.

“The same thing that Mom does, we’ve made Choices. Look, I can’t tell you any more about it. It’s part of the deal I accepted when I made my Choice. Just let that part of it go for now, because I’ve got a feeling before long you’re going to understand it better than you’ve ever wanted to. Suffice to say that Lucky and I have spent some time together in some of the seedier parts of the world, and that we were working together in Deadwood. Of course, what I didn’t know was that Lucky also had other things working.”

“He always does.”

“Yeah. So he had been pumping McCall full of liquor earlier in the day, and telling him how Hickock had been talking about what a sucker McCall was and how Hickock had to give him money for breakfast because McCall had lost his last dollar playing cards. I never did find out what Lucky had against Hickock, but he got McCall wound up enough to walk right up behind Hickock and blow his brains out through his eyeballs. Hickock dropped his cards on the table, a couple of boys went after McCall, and Lucky stole the money in the pot while I sat there with pieces of Wild Bill’s brains splattered all over my favorite coat. After a couple minutes’ shock I ran out into the street and grabbed Lucky. I pulled him into an alley and asked him what the hell he was doing. He said that he was done with Hickock, done with McCall and done with the West. He said he had bigger things to do in Europe and needed a little seed money to get him there. He left me with half our winnings, a coat matted with blood and brains and a stupid look on my face. I didn’t see him again until Germany.”

“Germany?” I asked.

“Another time, Dad. The point is, he told me the same thing he told Emily, you never leave while game’s still good. And judging by the look on your face, he’s said the same thing to you more than once.”

“Yeah. We played Glic once or twice in France, and Lucky always had a sense for when the game was good, when you could take down a hand just by vying at the right time, and who at the table was not terribly attached to their money. I always wondered what he wanted with the money. It’s not like he needs it.”

“I asked once. He said it’s just a way to keep score. The money itself only matters in that it means something to the guy you’re taking it from.”

“That sounds like Lucky.”

“Yeah. But what does he want with Emily? He had to know who she was, and he had to know that eventually you’d find out he’d been around her, and that you’d be pissed.”

“True, but would he care? It’s not like I can hurt him, Cain. Nobody can. At least nobody that was born here.”

“No, you’re probably right. But then why mess with her? She’s just a normal kid. It’s not like she’s one of us.”

“Maybe not, but he’d know that she mattered to me, and he’s always loved screwing with the things that I care about.” I leaned back in the booth and sipped on a Coke. None of this made sense. I’d spent enough time around Lucky over the centuries to start to think I had an idea how he thought, but this had me completely stumped. It’s like he knew I’d find her, like he…I sat bolt upright as the thought hit me. “He knew!”

“Knew what?”

“He knew this was coming! He knew that we’d all get together, that I’d see Emily together, that I’d have to come for Eve, that I’d find out that he’d been messing with the kid, all of it. The bastard probably set up the whole mess in Vegas that sent me to her in the first place.” I let out a low whistle at the way he’d played me. Again. After all this time, just when I thought I was getting to a point where I could see his moves, and he’d checkmated me again.
“We’ve gotta go.” I said after allowing myself a moment to wallow.

“Where?” Cain asked.

“I’m not sure yet, but we need to get everybody together and get ready to roll. If Lucky’s known about this for any length of time, then we can’t be sure what parts of what has happened have been our idea and what’s been his.” I dropped a five on the table for a tip and headed back to the poker room. When we got there Emily had taken her seat in the back corner, and her stacks were smaller than when we had left. There were more green chips, though, so it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I stayed on the periphery of her vision for a minute while she played a hand, and then tapped my wrist where a watch would be if I wore one. She looked at me and Cain, nodded, and picked up a couple of racks for her chips. We met her at the cashier’s cage as she was folding a nice little stack of hundred dollar bills into her front pocket.

“You boys are back early. What’s up?” She asked as we came up on either side of her. Cain and I were both looking around like our heads were on swivels, sure that we’d see Lucky leaning on a slot machine somewhere. It was useless, of course. Nobody sees Lucky unless he wants to be seen, and then you usually don’t want to see Lucky.

“Time to go sweetheart. Did you have fun?” I kept my tone light as we headed for the doors. I didn’t need any interference from casino security if they thought we were trying to muscle the girl. She picked up that something was wrong, and put her arm through Cain’s as we walked. We looked for all the world like a father and a couple of young lovebirds. I put that disturbing thought out of my head, and before anyone took notice of us, we were back out on the street headed toward Cain’s place.

We’d gone about half a block when Emily pulled up short. “Okay boys, out with it. What’s going on? Why did you come back early, and why were you in such a hurry to get me out of there?”

I could see that she wasn’t interested in waiting for an explanation, and checked off impatience as another attribute that she got from Eve. Yes, I know I credit Eve with all the character traits that I find annoying, and that I take credit for all the traits I like. She does exactly the same thing. She blames every hot-tempered moment in human history on me, from the start of wars to hockey fights. It’s a thing we do, so just leave me alone, okay?

“Well, Em, Dad and I had a little conversation and we realized that your friend Luke is someone we both know, only I knew him as Lucien, and the last time I saw him was in the 19th century.” Cain started.

“And I usually call him Lucky, and the last time I saw him was just a few days ago, when I left Las Vegas and started this whole trek.” I continued.

Her eyes got big and her mouth opened in a big, round “O” as she sat down on the stoop of the house we were in front of. I thought for a minute that it was because she had made the leap as to whom we were really talking about, and I guess that was probably part of it. But the rest of it was the fact that the son of a bitch was standing right behind me. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and spun to throw a punch. Lucky wasn’t the pacifist that Michael was, though and he caught my fist in his left hand without so much as a blink.

“Peace, Adam. I’m just here to talk.” He purred in my ear as he slowly forced my fist down to my side. We tend to forget exactly how powerful the seraphim are when we don’t see them do anything out of the ordinary, but Lucky was strong. “Good evening, Cain. Emily.” He inclined his head to each of them in turn.

“Morningstar,” replied Cain with a nod.

“Um, Luke? What’s going on? And why did he just call you…oh.” Emily put it all together pretty quickly, then her hand flashed to outside of her pocket where the money was, as if to touch it to see if it burned her or something.

Lucky chuckled a little at her discomfort. He let go of my hand and took a step back, holding his hands outstretched, palms out at me to keep me from charging him. I had no doubt that he could do plenty of unpleasant things to me, maybe even kill me, but I wasn’t in a place to care just then.

“Relax, Big A. I’m just here to talk. And just for a minute. We wouldn’t want your little poof friend Michael to smell sulfur on you, after all.”

“Alright then, talk.” I muttered, moving slightly in front of Emily.

“That’s sweet, Adam. But really, if I wanted to hurt the child I would have done it long before you ever knew she existed. But anyway, I’m here about the Choice. There are things you should know.”

“And we should believe you why?” I asked with no small hint of sarcasm.

“You probably shouldn’t. But you shouldn’t believe everything your mealy-mouthed sword-swinging nancy-boy tells you, either. Just like me, Michael has his own agenda. And it might not have your best interests at heart.”

“Oh don’t worry. I trust him at least as much as I trust you, pal.” I spat.

“And when, in all the years we’ve known each other, have I ever lied to you?” If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was actually hurt at the notion. I had to take a minute and think it through, then I looked over at Cain, whose expression mirrored my own.

“Never.” I said in a quiet voice.

“Exactly. I have never lied to you, Adam. And I haven’t spent the better part of seventy-five thousand years telling you the truth, not always the whole truth, mind you, but the truth nonetheless, just to build up equity so that I can lie to you on a muggy early morning in Louisiana. So will you at least give me a chance to say my peace?”

“Go ahead.” I was actually listening, although I wouldn’t for a second put it past him to be honest for a few thousand years just to set up one huge lie now. After all, he invented the long con, as it were.

“So far Michael has been telling you the truth as well. There is a Choice coming, and it’s another major Choice. But just like me, he hasn’t told you the whole truth. He hasn’t told you what’s at stake, and he won’t. Neither will I.”

“So why bring it up?” Emily asked. “If you’re not going to explain yourself and tell us the consequences of this Choice, why bring it up in the first place?”

“My dear girl, I am the Devil, remember? Torment is kinda right in my wheelhouse.”

“Ass.” She muttered as she leaned back on the stoop.

“Adam, you always did breed the most potty-mouthed children. But where was I? Oh yes, the point. The Choice
Michael is leading you to isn’t the only one coming for you, Big A, and it might not even be the most important one.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I get the whole tormenting obtuse thing, but shit, Lucky, I have no idea what you’re babbling about.” I interjected.

“Your Choice, Adam.” He replied calmly.

“Huh?” My natural eloquence sometimes amazes even me.

“Your. Choice.” He said very slowly and distinctly, as though speaking to a particularly slow first-grader. Eve did that, too, and I can bet I know where she learned it. “Haven’t you wondered why Eve made the Choice in The Garden instead of you? Haven’t you wondered why Cain and Abel both had their Choices so early in life and after all these years, you’ve never had to make a major decision? You know, something that might affect someone other than yourself?”

“Not really, no. I figured not everybody makes the big decisions. And after this long, I just kinda figured that I wasn’t going to have to.” It sounded lame even to my ears, but it was how I’d muddled through for so long.

“Sorry, pal. The father of the human race has a Choice to make, too. And yours is coming up soon. It’s part of this whole trip, and it might be even more important than the one little Mikey has already told you about.”

“Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he tell me I had a Choice coming? And why won’t you tell me what it is?” I was starting to get agitated, and Cain put a hand on my shoulder to keep me from going completely apeshit.

“He won’t tell you for the same reason that I won’t tell you more. We don’t want to influence your decision too soon. We both want the same thing, for you to choose our side, but we don’t want to make our case until the last possible moment so our arguments stay fresh.”

“Yeah, like there’s any chance I’d take your side in any argument.” I spat at the fallen angel.

“Of course there’s a chance. After all, Eve did, didn’t she? And by telling you a little bit now, while Michael is still keeping you in the dark, I undermine his argument before he ever makes it. Quite brilliant, if I do say so myself.”

He smirked and it was all I could do not to punch him square in the face. It helped that I knew he wouldn’t let me, and I didn’t want to end up with a sore jaw.

“So what do you want with us tonight, Lucypher?” I drew myself up to my full height and addressed him with all the weight I could put in my words.

“So formal, Adam? That was all. I’ve just been waiting for you to find my connection to dear little Emmy here, and thought that would be the most apropos moment for a chat. But now I think you probably want to be on your way, and since Eve got to Cain’s apartment about twenty minutes ago, you should probably go see if your first love and your last one have started the jell-o wrestling yet, don’t you think?” I glanced over at Cain, a little alarmed for his knick-knacks, and when I looked back at where Lucky had been standing, he was gone.

“Dad?” Emily asked from the step where she was sitting.

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“I’m a little scared.” Her voice was very small, and when I looked back at her, she could have as easily been fifteen as twenty-four. I held out my hand to help her up, and put my arm around her shoulder as we started walking through the night toward Cain’s place. Our feet splashed through things that were probably better left undescribed as we walked down the suddenly too-empty streets.

“I am too, baby girl. I am too.”

Chapter 5 (ish, but who’s really counting?)

Eve was sitting on the bed of a pickup truck when we got to Cain’s. Yes, I know it makes more sense to say she was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck, but she wasn’t. This particular truck, a late-70s model Ford with an impressive green-and-rust-patterned paint job, didn’t have a tailgate anymore. It had a rope across the bed where the tailgate used to be, and Eve was leaning against that with her hands twined through the frayed rope like a bad Delta S&M flick. She’s changed out of her stripped chic and was sporting more restrained brown cowboy boots, Daisy Duke cutoffs and a faded Faster Pussycat t-shirt with a hole under one arm big enough to show her ribcage tattoo.

“How’d you get that to stick, anyway? I’ve always had a hell of a time with ink fading after a few days.” I pointed to the cherry blossoms that lined her left side and armpit.

“It does. I get it touched up about once a week. Let’s go up, I gotta pee.” My Eve, mother of humanity, but a few steps removed from Anne Landers.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Emily asked.

“Like a bitch.” Eve followed Cain up the stairs without a backwards glance for the girl and me.

Emily looked up at me and asked, “Why would she keep getting it fixed if it’s just going to fade? And why hurt yourself over and over again?”

“That, my dear, may very well be the essence of what makes Eve, Eve. No one’s ever accused her of taking the easy road, or the painless one, or the logical one. But once she commits to something, it’s not a good idea to get in her way. Let’s go on up, we need to grab our bags and get moving.” We followed the others upstairs and found Cain standing in the small living room looking around confused.

“What’s up, son? Mom peeing with the door open again?” I slid past him towards the kitchen and grabbed a Red Bull out of the fridge. Immortal or not, I still wanted a little extra boost if I was going to be driving half the night.

“Where are they?” Emily asked as she looked around the room. That’s when I realized that we were alone in the apartment. Myra and Michael weren’t where we had left them, which would be on the sofa. As a matter of fact, they weren’t anywhere in the apartment.

Eve came out of the bathroom buttoning her shorts and said, “What’s the holdup? Where’s the floozy and the fucknugget angel?” The snarky grin faded from her face when she saw the look in Emily’s eyes. “What’s going on?”

“They’re not here.” I said.

“What do you mean, they’re not here?” Eve said. Finally, somebody else’s turn to give the stupid response.

“Small words, Eve. Was there one in particular you didn’t understand, or was it just a general denseness that you needed help with?” I was worried about Myra, but wasn’t going to pass up one of my few opportunities to be snide. When most of the people you associate with are sharper of wit than you are, it’s important to take your shots whenever they come along.

“I get that they’re not here, asshole, but where are they?” Eve shot a concerned glance over at Emily, who was looking a little frantic at her mom’s absence.

“Saint Patrick’s.” Cain’s voice came from the kitchenette.

“Huh?” I lapsed immediately from witty to my typical eloquence as I wandered into the sitting area with him. He handed me a note in Myra’s hand.

“Don’t worry about me, Michael is showing me St. Patrick’s Church. We’ll wait for you in Lafayette Square until dawn. If you haven’t shown up by then, we’ll watch the sun rise in the park, go to the early Mass, and meet you back here. We’ll pick up some beignets for the road. Love, M.” I showed it to Emily, who was starting to show signs of early freak-out.

“It’s her handwriting, and she loves old churches, so it makes sense. Not sure why she’d go off with Michael, though. He’s a bit of a douche.” Emily looked around as Eve barked out a laugh at that last bit. I stifled my own laugh, but Cain didn’t bother.

Between chuckles he said, “She probably went out with him because we were gone all friggin’ day. Remember, we left around 11:30 in the morning to bail Mom out. Then we went to the casino, and what happens in casinos happened, which is to say we lost track of more than a few hours. Then we had our little encounter with the Prince of Fucking Darkness and meandered on back here, and now it’s well after midnight. So I’m not surprised that your mom got tired of waiting on us and decided to go off and do something on her own.”

“Prince of Darkness? This would be a really good time for you to tell me that vampires are real and Lestat really does wander the Quarter.” Eve said in a voice more concerned than any I’d ever heard her use. She actually looked frightened, an emotion I’d thought her incapable of.

“No, Mom. It was Him. He found us outside the casino and made his presence known.” Cain went over to Eve and guided her down to a diner-style kitchen chair when it looked like her legs suddenly wouldn’t hold her weight.

“What did he want?” She looked haunted, like everything since The Garden was flashing through her mind.

“He wanted to warn Dad.”

“Warn Adam? About what?” she asked.

“His Choice.” Cain told her. He sat next to her in another chair that looked like it belonged to a four-top in Mel’s Diner, but also looked just about perfect against his ultra-modern kitchen appliances. The fifties-style vinyl chairs and flecked table stood is stark relief against the iPod white of all his various blenders, dicers, juicers and other implements of destruction that would surely baffle Paula Deen, much less me, with my culinary skills leaning more towards the Swedish Chef on the Muppets than anything ever shown on the Food Network. Eve just stared at him for a minute before she looked up at me.
“I’m sorry.” It was almost a whisper, and I couldn’t see her lips move, but I knew she had said it.

“Sorry? Sorry for what? My Choice hasn’t even happened yet. What do you have to be sorry for?” I kneeled on the floor in front of Eve and tried to look her in the face, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“It wasn’t supposed to ever come.” She almost spat. “The whole point was so that you wouldn’t have to choose. That was the deal. Now the bastard goes back on his word after all these years. I should have known he was just saving it up for when it really mattered.”

“Okay, I’m confused. Cain, do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” I stood up and set my Red Bull down on the counter.

“Yeah. I do.” He murmured.

“Well, would you like to explain things, since your mother obviously isn’t capable of it right this second?” I was getting a little loud, and took a deep breath to try and control my volume. Things wouldn’t improve for us if we were reintroduced to New Orleans’ finest.

“No.”

“Excuse me? What did you say?” I lapsed into the incredulous parent voice. You know the one. The one where the middle name is unstated but understood. The one where the recipient immediately understands that he or she is grounded for the next century if their next answer isn’t completely satisfactory. For the record, the grounding voice loses a great deal of its impact after your child passes his fiftieth millennium.

“I said, no. This is on the list of things that I can’t talk to you about, Dad. And you’re just going to have to take that one how it comes. I know what Mom is saying, and neither of us can tell you about it. It has to do with our Choices, and yours, and we can’t say anything that might sway your decision. It’s one of the few rules the Father enforces directly. This is your free will, Dad. Whatever your Choice is, it’s yours. And nobody, not me, not Mom, not Emily, Lucky, Michael or the man in the moon can stick our nose in. That’s just the deal. So please don’t push. Just come with me into the den and give Mom a second or two to catch her breath. Then we can go down to Lafayette Square, pick up Myra and the assclown angel, and we’ll blow this pop stand.” He handed me my drink, walked me into the den, and sat me down on the couch next to Emily.

She looked up at Cain and said, “Are they gonna be okay in the park all alone? I mean, I’ve heard New Orleans has a crime problem, and Mom hasn’t been in cities very much.” She was obviously worried, and wanted to get going as fast as possible. Cain gave her a lopsided grin and patted her on the top of the head.

“They’ll be fine, kiddo. Remember who Michael was before he came down here slumming.” He said as he ducked into his bedroom to grab a bag.

“Oh yeah, that whole flaming sword thing’s real, isn’t it?” She relaxed a little when she realized that despite his looking like a skinnier James Marsters, he could handle himself. “But will he take care of my Mom?” A little worry crept back into her eyes.

Cain came out of his bedroom wearing a black leather jacket with a duffle over one shoulder. He tucked a pistol in the back waistband of his pants and said, “He’s an angel, punkin. A real one. He could no more let an innocent mortal be hurt in his presence than I could be upstaged by a snotty older brother. It’s just not in our natures.” He shot me a sidelong smirk and I shook my head. I’d let him poke at the scab now and then, it might heal a little messy, but chicks dig scars. I stood up and held out my hand.

“What do you want, Pop?”

“Something tells me that’s not the only equalizer you’ve got floating around this joint, and if you think you need the firepower, you’d better hook me up, too. I prefer something in a 9mm, Italian if you have it.” He went over to the upright piano, opened the bench, and tossed me a Beretta in a paddle holster. I checked the action, chambered a round, and slid it into the small of my back. “You set for ammo?” I asked.

“If he runs short I’ve got us covered,” came Eve’s voice from the kitchen doorway. “I prefer the Glock, but I don’t have the wrist strength that you boys seem to have in abundance. Here, little bit, you should just tote my duffel. If we get into anything ugly, you’ll want what’s inside.” That confirmed my earlier suspicions about the sawed-off shotgun, but Emily shook her head.

“I’m good. I don’t like guns, but I’ve got a pea-shooter in my boot as a last resort.” She then produced a throwing knife from somewhere I never saw and tossed it underhand across the room into a photo Cain had hanging on the far wall. The little knife quivered right between the eyes of the woman in the picture, and Eve looked impressed.

“That doesn’t exactly improve the composition of the photo, Baby Sister.” Cain said as he crossed the room, yanked the knife out of the wall and returned it to Emily.

“Yeah, but sometimes you just have to make a point.” Somehow I always found myself surrounded by women with a point to make. And all too often, I was at the receiving end of those points. I looked around at my little family assault team, and nodded at Cain.

“Let’s roll, son.” I said.

“Lead the way. I’ll lock up.” I didn’t bother mentioning that I thought it was awfully optimistic to be locking doors. After all, the only reason you lock a door after you leave is because you expect to return to whatever you’re leaving behind. And until very recently, my family was not exactly known for returning to things (or people) we’ve left behind.

I don’t know what I expected to find in Lafayette Square in the middle of the night, but Myra dancing in a drum circle wasn’t anywhere on the list. And Michael beating a tambourine and singing folk songs was even further from what I thought we’d find. But that’s exactly what we encountered when we got there. Michael was sitting at the base of the statue of Henry Clay keeping time with a kid playing a battered Martin acoustic while a half-dozen or so dreadlocked white kids beat on djembes around a portable fire pit and Myra danced with two or three hippie chicks who looked like they hadn’t shaved legs or armpits since well before Katrina.

As we walked up to the love-in, I looked incredulously as Michael and a couple of college-aged kids sang “A time to dance, a time to mourn, a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together…” Michael set the tambourine down beside Henry Clay’s bronze feet and came over to us, his face positively glowing. I swear I could see an outline of wings around the angel made flesh.

“Adam, isn’t it beautiful? They remember the old Books! They haven’t lost faith, these children of yours remember!” It was all I could do not to laugh in the exuberant angel’s face.

“Michael, lemme ask you something. In all your time up there among the heavenly host, have you ever heard of a guy named Pete Seeger?” I was trying to keep a straight face, but it was tough, let me tell you.

“No, who is this Pete Seeger? Is he a minister? A man of God?” Michael asked.

“Kinda. He’s a folk singer. And he took the words from Ecclesiastes and set them to music. He made it into a protest song against a war a few decades ago.” As much as I disliked the archangel and all his brethren for meddling with my family for thousands of years, I hated to watch people’s illusions shatter, and that’s what happened to Michael as he realized that these smelly kids weren’t holy after all, just a little dirty.

He walked over to a park bench, looking for all the world like he’d lost his only friend. Since I never considered myself a friend of his in the first place, I followed along more out of a morbid curiosity than out of any real concern for his feelings. I mean, let’s face it; I really didn’t like Michael on his best days, and this hadn’t been my most stellar week. He put his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. If I didn’t know them to be cold emotionless bastards, I’d have thought the archangel was about to break down and cry.

Myra came over from her dancing, a little breathless, and sat next to Michael on the bench. She looked from the shaken angel to me, and her tone was less than friendly. “What did you say to him?” she demanded.

“I just told him that Pete Seeger used the book of Ecclesiastes as a basis for a protest song from the Vietnam War. He got all weepy when he realized that the kids weren’t quoting scripture and I came over to see what was up.” I noted with no small hint of irony that in the background I could hear a girl singing in a lovely soprano Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try…

“Oh, Adam, what did you have to do that for?” Myra asked me with a glance that was more pitying than accusatory. It read something like “you hapless bastard, why did you have to stick your foot in it up to the nuts this time?”

“Well, aside from the fact that it’s the truth, I don’t really know!” I was starting to get a little defensive. I mean, it’s not as if I wanted to turn the Sword of Heaven into a blubbering pile of goo in the middle of a public park in the wee hours of a Louisiana morning. But for the record, if I’d known that a little folk music was all it took, I’d have trotted out some old Buffy St. Marie records a long time ago.

“The truth doesn’t matter, he was happy. And we need him. If it makes him feel a little better to think that people are still reading the Bible, then let him think that.” She patted Michael on the back for a minute before she got up, shot me a look that spoke volumes, and went over to join Emily, who was singing harmony with the soprano.

I sat there for a minute, trying to figure out what to say to a distraught seraphim whose faith in humanity was restored for one brief, shining moment before I reached in and ripped it away. “Uh, Michael?” I started tentatively.

“Go away, Adam.” He didn’t look up; he didn’t even take his hands away from his face.

“I can’t. For one thing, Myra will kick my ass. And for another thing, we kinda still need you. And we need you with your head in the game. Because, well, because you’re the only one who has any idea where we’re supposed to go next. We got Eve. We got some traveling money, and we’re all here, ready to roll. Except we need you to tell us exactly where to roll to.” Maybe not comforting, but it was all at least honest.

“I don’t care. If the people have no place for The Book, or God, or angels, why should I even bother trying to help them? Why waste my time?” Wow. He had gone from zero to suicidal in .4 seconds. This might require some tough love. Or it would get me skewered on the flaming sword of heavenly retribution. One of those.

“What else are you supposed to do with your time? Tune your harp?” I went for snide, hoping if I behaved the way he expected me to behave, he’d cut out the sniveling and behave the way I expected him to behave. Not that I really liked the way he usually behaved, but at least over the past few days I’d grown accustomed to that Michael. That Michael was an insufferable tightass with an Archangel complex (although I suppose it’s not really a complex if you really are part of the heavenly host), but at least he wasn’t a whiny little bitch.

“You’re immortal, Michael. And immortality is something I know a little about. If there’s one thing the past seventy-five odd eons has taught me, it’s that there’s nothing less precious to an immortal than time. It’s practically impossible to waste your time, because you have so much of it that it’s meaningless. It’s nothing for one of us to put tape measures on the ocean floor and check it every hundred years to see if the earth is expanding (Yes, I did. Yes, it is.). It’s less than nothing for one of us to spend eighty-three years counting every grain of sand on a mile of sea shore (Again, yes, I did. But no, I don’t remember the exact number. I also admit to having lost count a lot and become quite distracted by some of the scenery at the beach. It was Italy, it was several hundred years ago, and while the Italian women of that era may not have been as enhanced as young women are today, they were every bit as lovely, and every bit as unselfconscious at the beach. And that is all I shall share on that topic.) So how can you waste your time? You’ve got nothing but time. So get your head out of your angelic ass and let’s get moving.”

I thought that was pretty good as far as motivational speeches go. For me, it ranked right up there. But Michael didn’t move. Okay, he raised one hand to flip me off, but he left his head bowed and never even looked over at me when he did it. I got up and headed over to Emily, figuring that she would be less likely to chew me out for getting us in this spot than her mother, and more likely to help get us out of it than Eve or Cain.

“Em, would you go talk to Michael? He’s sulking.” I asked as she finished singing.

“Why is he sulking? What did you do?” She asked. She looked so cute when she crossed her arms like that and glared at me. It was less cute when I realized that Eve and Myra were doing it, too. Cain, for his part, was sitting on the base of the statue picking out the opening notes to an Avett Brothers tune called Murder in the City. The song is written from one brother to another telling him not to take vengeance if he gets killed. Kid definitely had the ironic thing down cold.

“I might have given him the impression that the youth, and probably most of humanity in general, was indifferent to religion.” I went for a sheepish grin at the end, but probably only looked queasy. She sighed the sigh of the long-suffering woman, which oddly enough has been quickly mastered by every female I’ve ever spent more than a couple of days with, and went over to talk with Michael. She sat on the bench next to him as Myra came up to stand next to me.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to fix your mess, and I knew you’d come to Em for help. Everybody does eventually.” She said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Then why didn’t you just send her over to talk to him in the first place? Hell, Myra, I don’t even like the guy. Remember, I’m the one who decked him!”

“Yeah, but you needed a little reminder that your words carry weight. Even with angels, Adam. Everybody pays more attention to what you say than you think. And probably more than we should. But we do it anyway.”

“And why is that?”

“Call it respect for our elders if you like.”

“Ouch.”

“I’m kidding. But face it, you’re the Adam. You’ve been around forever, and even though Michael has been an angel a lot longer than you’re been human, he’s only been on earth a few days. You’ve been on earth longer than anyone. So when you talk about human nature, he’s gonna believe you. And if you drop a bombshell, somebody’s gonna have to pick up the pieces. Lucky for you, she’s good at picking up the pieces.” There was something in her eyes when she said that, a little glimmer that she blinked away almost before I could notice it, but I filed it away under the “things I want to ask about when we’re alone rather than in a park with out whole posse and a passel of unwashed kids wearing hemp pants” category.

Emily sat with Michael for a minute or two before he sat up and looked at her. Then they sat there for a few more minutes before he straightened and began to assume a little of the officious shithead posture that we were looking for. Then Emily waved me over to them, and after a few seconds of the confused chest-pointing thing I realized she really did want me over there, so I went. I walked up, a little nervously, to where my daughter and the Sword of Heaven sat on a park bench, her arm around his shoulders and him blotting his eyes with a blue silk hanky that I swear he didn’t have when I was sitting there.

“Dad, I think you owe Michael an apology.” Emily said as I walked up. Crap. They weren’t going to make this easy on me. I looked back at Eve and Myra, who made a “go on” gesture with their hands. Cain just shrugged and smirked a little at me as if to say “I’m not the one who made the angel cry, dad. I just invented murder.”

“Michael…I don’t really know what to say, but I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intimate that people today didn’t believe in The Father anymore, and I didn’t mean to upset you. So, um, sorry.” God I hoped that was all he needed to get going. It had gone from muggy to chilly as the night went on, and if we stuck around this park any longer I was gonna need to pee before we hit the highway. That, and I couldn’t really think of anything else to say.

“What about my face?” Michael asked, his expression a perfect mask.

“Your, uh, face?” I was honestly confused here.

“Yes. My face. You hit me, Adam. That just isn’t done. If I deserve an apology for anything, it’s for you putting your hands on one of the Host.”

“You have got to be kidding me. You deserved every single punch you’ve taken since I saw you, and probably more besides. If you think I’m going to apologize for punching you in the face, then you can take your flaming sword and” Michael was up off the bench with his arms around me before I could tell him exactly where I thought his sword would fit nicely.

“Oh, you do like me! Emily was right, you put on this gruff exterior to hide your true feelings, and the nastier you are to people the more you care about them! I knew there was no way you truly despised me, after all I am an Archangel, the most Heavenly of the Heavenly Host. Oh, Adam, it is so good to know how you truly feel.” I glared over the angel’s shoulder at Emily, who mouthed at me “just go with it” in exaggerated expressions. I took the high road and gently disentangled myself from Michael before he started to sport a chubby. The last thing I needed was an immaculately dressed angel feeling me up in a New Orleans public park in the middle of the night. I’d already been to the precinct house once today, and that was quite enough, thanks.

“Well, now that we’ve got all that sorted out, can we go?” I asked Michael as the rest of our troupe gathered ‘round.

“Of course. We must away at once to find the one who must make the Choice.” Replied the angel.

“So, where are we going? And I’m not leaving my truck. Period.” Eve has always had such a way of making her opinions known. Usually by stating them loudly and often.

“Nashville. We’ll find the young man in Nashville, Tennessee.” Nashville. Ok, I guess we were going country.
We rolled into Nashville a bit before suppertime and got a couple of rooms at a Fairfield on the outskirts of town. I didn’t know how long we were going to be on this little adventure and wanted to stretch our cash as long as we could, so I decided to forego the Jacuzzi room, no matter how good a soak sounded after a day in a car with Michael and Myra. Myra was a good co-pilot, but driving all day was driving all day, no matter how much you liked the navigator. Eve and Emily had ridden together, Eve giving me some line about wanting to get to know the kid better, but I figured she just didn’t want me to suggest that Michael ride shotgun with her in her beat up pickup, and I was pretty sure that the suspension in that thing didn’t do anyone any favors after the first five hours on the road. Cain looked fresh as a daisy after a day on his motorcycle, and I was more than a little jealous. I’ve always loved bikes, the feeling of power and control is like nothing else in the world, and there’s really nothing wrong with a couple of gnats in your teeth. I’ve always considered it a fair exchange.

“Alright, kiddies. We’ve got three rooms, so I figured Myra and I would share one…” I started, but Eve was smirking at me so I pulled up short. “What?”

“Nothing, dear. Go right ahead with your little bunk assignments.” Eve replied.

I went on. “Um…there are two beds in each room, so I thought Eve and Emily would share one room and Michael and Cain could share the other one. Is that okay with everyone?” Hearing no objections, I went on. “Why don’t we take an hour or so to freshen up, grab a nap if you want one, and we can all meet back here for dinner, then we can figure out where to start looking for whoever it is we’re supposed to find. That work?” I passed keys out to everyone and grabbed my bag from the back of Eve’s truck. She was still smirking at me as I passed her on my way to the elevator.

“What are you grinning about?” I asked.

“Nothing. I just think it’s cute.” She said.

“What’s cute?”

“You’re being so, what’s the word, solicitous of Myra. I mean, really, Adam. You left her more than two decades ago and haven’t spared a moment’s thought for her until a couple of days ago when you were steered back into her life by our friendly meddling archangel, and now all of a sudden you’re playing Daddy of the Year to little Emily, who I assure you is more than capable of taking care of herself, and you’re being all Ward Cleaver to Myra, who might even be buying it, which is quite possibly saddest thing I’ve seen since you fell head over heels for that redhead in Ireland. You remember her? What was her name?”

“Sorcha.” I replied quietly. I remembered her well. Almost stereotypically Irish, with brilliant green eyes, milk-white skin and curly red hair. The name means “bright, radiant, light” and I used to joke with her that she got particularly radiant when she was angry, which with me around happened more often than she deserved.

I met her when I was passing through Ireland studying the myth of Cuchulain. I’d heard them once long ago, and when Sechan Torpeist brought them back in the 7th Century, I decided to wander through Ireland following the trail of Ulster’s Hound. I’d been hanging around Mecca for a while listening to the (at that time) new teachings of Mohammed, but headed West when it became apparent that one more time a young prophet was going to talk a lot about love and peace, and one more time the powers that be were going to start killing people to protect he status quo.

I’d seen all that before with the Carpenter, and I kinda liked Mohammed, so I headed to Europe before the people around him could muddy up everything he was trying to teach. I’ve always wondered if I stuck around if I could have avoided some of the stupidity they put into his version of The Book about women. I know if Eve had been around that crap would never have seen print. But anyway, I headed west, and stopped in Ireland to wander around and look for Hound tracks.

I do that every now and then, meander a countryside to look for evidence of legends. It’s pretty entertaining to see where the tallest of tales grows from, and you get to see some pretty country that way. Well, I was meandering around the part of Ireland where Cuchulain was supposed to have killed Cullen’s watchdog and taken its place, when I came upon a little farmhouse. It was late, I was hungry, and there was a pot on the fire. The Irish have always been a hospitable people, and when I knocked on the door and showed that I had a little booze with me, I was welcomed to hearth and home.

Her father, Finlay if I recall, was a fisherman in County Donegal, and he had a couple of big mackerel over a fire when I first arrived. He and I sat up most of the night drinking and telling lies, as fisherman and travelling men are wont to do, and by the time the sun came up, we were fast friends. Truth be told, I didn’t even notice Sorcha that first night, but I later found out that she noticed me. That’s not some great comment on my virility or spectacular attractiveness, although I am plenty virile and more attractive than most. It’s more a comment on exactly how few men of apparently similar age had ventured near the coast of County Donegal since she had developed an eye for young men.

The next morning Finlay and I went out on his boat, my first efforts at fishing since most people stopped doing it by standing in the shallows and casting nets. I’d been pretty good at surf fishing, and was relatively handy with a spear in a stream, but this whole business of rods was foreign to me. There were no reels involved, thank Father, or I’m sure I would have ended up more frequently punctured than I did, but I still managed to provide Finlay with a good day’s worth of amusement. At least he knew what he was doing, and I could row well enough, so the day wasn’t a complete waste. It was when we walking back up the path to their house that I first got a good look at Sorcha. She was chopping wood for the dinner fire, and the sun was setting behind her making it look like her hair was a fiery halo. I’ll admit it; I was downright twitterpated. I might even have left the fish lying along the path if Finlay hadn’t noticed my plight and helped me back into motion with a kick in the ass.

“Put ‘em back in yer head, laddie, that’s me Sorcha you’re gapin’ at.”

“Your?”

“Me daughter. And I’ll thank you to be scrubbin’ yer thoughts clean as snow before ye direct ‘em her way again.” I looked over at him, but the old man was grinning at me.

“Sorry.” I said, not meaning a letter of the word.

“Liar,” he laughed as we continued on our way up to the house.

Somehow I found an excuse to stick around Finlay’s place, and became somewhat less useless as a fisherman, although I was a much better oarsman than I’d ever be an angler. And I found other ways to make myself useful, splitting wood, re-thatching the roof, hunting rabbits and other small game. Sorcha wasn’t immediately receptive to my charms, but after a few weeks of persistence, not to mention a few weeks of being the only guy around who wasn’t her father, we came to an understanding of sorts.

That understanding being that whenever her father wasn’t around, we’d make love like minks as often as possible while still getting all her chores done. This went on for a couple of months before Finlay made mention of getting along in years and needing someone to start taking the boat out a few days a week. Now Finlay wasn’t an old man, but when the average man lived to only his mid-thirties, it didn’t take long for someone to think he was old, especially when he was well into his third decade. That would usually have been my clue to move on before anyone caught on to the fact that I wasn’t aging, but I decided that Finlay already knew something was odd about me, and Sorcha was so head over heels for me that she wouldn’t care. So one night, after dinner, I decided to tell them the truth about myself.

“Sorcha, Finlay, there’s something about me that you should know.” I started.

“Aye, son, what’s that?” Fin replied.

“Well, I’ve enjoyed my time here. A lot. And I’d like to stay on for a while longer. But if you don’t want me around after you hear what I have to say, then I understand.”

“What is it, lad? I can’t fathom anything ye could say that we’d toss ye out on your ear for, but go ahead with yuir tale.”

“Well, it’s like this. You were talking about getting on in years…” I paused, unsure of how to continue.

“Aye, and I am. It’s not something I’m thrilled about, but it’s happenin’ just the same.”

“Well, I won’t.”

“Huh?” I love it when I can get that reaction out of someone else. Petty, I know, but that’s how I roll.

“I don’t age. And I don’t die. I’ve been alive a long time, a lot longer than anyone else ever has, and there’s no sign that I’m going to die any time soon.” It felt good to say it, but I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen next.

“What…are ye?” Sorcha asked in a scared, small voice. The look on her face was why I so seldom told anyone about my true nature.

“I’m a man, like any other. Except I don’t get old, and I don’t die.”

“So yuir a god?” She asked, breathless. In Ireland at that time it wasn’t out of the realm of most people’s understanding for a deity to visit the Earth and consort with mortal women. And Sorcha was worth some consorting, let me tell you.

“No. I’m just a man.” I said.

“But ye won’t die? Ever?” Fin asked.

“If history serves as any indication for future performance, no, I’ll never die.”

“And Aidan isn’t yuir name, is it?” he continued.

“No. Most places I’m called Adam.” I confirmed.

“I need a drink.” Sorcha sat down heavily in a chair by the fire, and I got a bottle from the cupboard and poured a big slug for each of us. Fin drained his in one gulp, and held out his cup for another. I poured him another drink, and sat down myself.

“So do you want me to leave? I’m sorry I deceived you both, but I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”

“Nay, son, ye don’t need ta leave. I’ve grown a bit attached to ye, and I know Sorcha’s taken a right shine to ye as well. I don’t mind keeping ye around if ye’ll learn to be a bit of a better fisherman, so ye can take car of our girl here once I’m gone.” Fin sipped his second drink and settled in to his chair.

“I…I don’t want ye to leave.” Sorcha spoke very quietly, not looking at me. “But what will ye do when I get old?”

“I’ll love you.” I said very quietly, surprising myself a little because it was true. I hadn’t talked of love to anyone since Eve, but this fire-haired maid of Erin had captivated me completely.

“Do ye mean it?” She looked up at me then, and there was a moisture in those jade eyes that tore my heart apart. I knew it was a bad idea, and I knew that it was going to hurt like hell when it ended, but Father help me, I was in love with the girl.

“Aye, I mean it.” I went over to her, took her hands in mine, and said, “Sorcha, will ye be mine and no other’s?” I don’t often affect the accent of the times, but it seemed appropriate at the moment.e

“Aye. Will ye be mine and no other’s?” She asked in turn, and then thought of whom she was asking and added, “as long as we both draw breath?”

“Aye. As long as we both draw breath I am yours and no other’s.” I pulled her to her feet and kissed her for a long time in front of the fire. After what might have been an uncomfortable moment for a father, Finlay coughed.

“Then it’s done. Now that ye be me son, ye must learn to fish for real. I’ll not be havin’ ye stay here and do woman’s work just so ye can sneak off to the woodshed with me daughter every afternoon.” I had the courtesy to blush, and we all laughed and drank well into the night. It was with a throbbing head and a delicate stomach that I went out with Fin the next morning to begin my true education as a fisherman, but somehow I managed.

I was with them for another forty years, one of the longest stretches I ever spent in one place. There were a few skirmishes around, but nothing touched our remote little fishing shack. And on the off chance that someone did wander by with ill intent, it’s always been very useful to be immortal when people started waving swords about.
Fin died about ten years after I arrived, a very old man for the time. The last couple of years he would go out in the boat with me, but he’d just sit in the stern and tell stories while I hauled in fish. Then for the last few weeks he sat in the house by the fire and told Sorcha stories of her mother, and how much like her she was. I dug the old man’s grave with my own hands, and built his cairn out of stones that Sorcha helped me carry down from the hills.

I wept for the passing of that old man like I hadn’t cried since Abel died, and wasn’t ashamed of a single tear. I let that man and his daughter touch something inside of me that I had walled up when Eve and I split up. I didn’t even know it was still in there; it had been so long since I’d seen it. And then eventually, Sorcha grew old, and she died one night in my arms. We had no children, so I was the only one with her at the end, or at least I thought I was. It was a spring evening, and the first fireflies had just appeared. She had been fading for weeks, and I knew it was coming soon.

“Aidan, love, carry me out to the rock in the front yard. I want to see the fire flies one last time.” She never called me Adam in all the years we were together. I was always Aidan to her. I did as she asked, and lay her down on the grass in front of our cottage. I piled up blankets around her so she would be warm enough and I sat behind her so she could lean on my chest and sit up to look across the hills at the fireflies flickering in the dusk.

“The little people are lovely tonight, aren’t they, Aidan?” Her voice was a papery whisper, and I had to lean close to hear her. Just as I got close enough to almost feel her breath on my earlobe, she reached up behind her head and pulled me down further, kissing me passionately. Sorcha was nothing if not a creature of passion, and no number of years could steal that from her.

I turned her frail body around and kissed her with everything I had. I held her tight, but gently at the same time. She was so thin, but I could feel a passion in her grip and in her kiss that had all but burnt out months before. I don’t know if we kissed for seconds or minutes, but when the kiss was over she leaned back, let out a contented sigh, and died. I laid her down on our yard with fireflies dancing in the spring evening, and I kissed her one last time. I lay there on the grass with her all night, and when the sun came up the next morning, I wasn’t nearly as alone as I was expecting to be.

Eve was sitting on the front steps of the house, watching me. I hadn’t seen her in several hundred years, and like most of our meetings, that one hadn’t ended well. I wasn’t in the mood for a fight, but she just stood up, walked over to me without a word, and put her arms around me. I fell to my knees on the lawn and cried on her shoulder for a little while, and eventually we got up and buried Sorcha next to her father. We never spoke a word that day, and when we were finished, Eve walked back out of my life. Sometimes nothing needs to be said. But now, standing beside an elevator at a Fairfield Inn in East Nashville, Tennessee, Eve had brought all that rushing back to me.

“Why bring that up now?” I was not happy with the comparisons between Myra and Sorcha. I had loved Sorcha like I loved few women in my life, and it still hurt to remember losing her. But I also still smiled a lot when I remembered her, so in a lot of ways it was worth it.

“Believe it or not, Adam, I don’t like to see you hurt.” She said.

“If that’s true, why have you beaten the shit out of me so many times?” I was straining to keep things light, but she wasn’t making anything easy.

“No, asshole, I mean really hurt. The kind that takes a long time to get over, if you ever do. And you’re falling for this woman, and that only hurts you in the long run. I know, I’ve watched it.”

“Yeah, I’ve always meant to ask why you were there that night in Ireland.” I started, but Eve cut me off before I could get going.

“Don’t. You don’t need or want to know why I was there, but you needed me, and I was there. That’s all that matters. Now I can see the look in your eyes with Myra, and I can see how she looks at you, and you’ve got to remember, this isn’t smart. It doesn’t work out for us. Ever.” She was right up in my face by now, speaking low and very intensely. There was a lot going on behind her eyes that she wasn’t saying, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get into in a motel hallway.

“Butt out. I appreciate your concern, and I’m grateful for your help back in Ireland, but this is my deal. I’m a big boy and I can take care of myself.” I turned to head into the waiting elevator, and Eve followed me.

“I know you can take care of yourself, dick.” She muttered, pushing the button for the third floor. I all the rooms were together, so I just leaned as far away from her as I could in the cramped space. “But for once in all these years, please think of something or someone outside your own skin. I don’t even really know what you’ve gotten me into here, but if it’s as big as you claim, then for my own good, and maybe the good of everybody else in the world, we need you to keep your shit together. And that means you can’t go tits-up and tail-waggy over Little Miss Cuppa Joe until this is all over. Let’s just stay focused, save the world, and then you can chase waitress tail for another thousand years for all I care.”

There were so many absurdities in Eve’s monologue that I couldn’t even begin to address them, so I stayed quiet until we got off the elevator and went into our separate rooms. I did toss her a glance across the hall as I opened the door and said “Eve?”

“What?”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Really.”

She didn’t look very mollified, but she obviously knew it was all she was going to get, so she gave me a little smile, shot me the bird, and went into her room. I went into mine, kicked off my boots, and flopped down on the bed for a quick nap before dinner.

When I woke up, Myra was lying next to me. She was awake, just lying down after a shower. Her hair smelled fresh and clean, and reminded me that I could use a quick shower to get rid of the road grime. From time to time over the years I’ve forgotten how nice it is to wake up next to someone. Someone you actually give a shit about, that is. That’s when I realized that Eve was on to something; that I actually had started to care about Myra. I was going to have to deal with that before too long. She had been special to me when we were first together, and the intervening years had only softened the sharp edges of youth. She looked more comfortable in her skin now, and I liked that she wasn’t out to impress anyone. She just lay down next to me on top of the scratchy hotel blanket in a baggy t-shirt and panties, not trying to get all supermodel on me, just comfortable.

Yeah, I was definitely going to have to cut this short before it got in the way of things. If I had a Choice of my own coming up, then I was gonna need to focus. And all signs were pointing towards whatever great Event happening sooner rather than later, so I had better get in the game.

Eventually. But first I kissed the top of Myra’s head, then kissed my way down her forehead to her temple, and along the side of her face as she looked up at me. I paused for moment or two at her ear before moving on to her lips. We kissed rather seriously for minute or two before she pulled back and grinned at me.

“Shower. Shave. Mouthwash. Dinner. In that order. More playtime later.” She kissed the end of my nose and got out of bed, digging through her bag for a fresh pair of jeans. I got out of bed, tossing clothes around the room as I headed for the shower. One of the great things about travel in the modern world is the advent of little hotel soaps and shampoos. I know women still carry seventeen pounds of hair goop and facial scrubs, but all I require nowadays is a razor and an electrical outlet. So I took a quick shower and dutifully scraped off a few days’ worth of stubble, and headed back out into the room to get dressed. I instantly regretted not taking more clothes into the bathroom with me when I was greeted by a chorus of wolf whistles from Myra and Eve, who were sitting on the bed watching TV.

“Hey baby! Shake what you got!” Eve had more than a few years’ experience with what men yelled at strip clubs, so she dredged up the more prurient phrases she’d learned strutting runways from L.A. to Miami in an effort to embarrass me. Once I realized that Emily was nowhere to be seen, I just tossed the towel on the floor. After all, there’s nothing here they both haven’t seen before, right?

“Pick that wet towel up!” Myra shrieked.

“How dare you throw that towel on the carpet?” Eve followed right on her tail. Great. Two of them. I tossed the towel into the bathroom and dug around in my bag for some clean underwear, jeans and my favorite Johnny Cash T-shirt. Hey, if we’re in Nashville, might as well rock the Man in Black, right?

“Underwear, Adam?” Eve smirked a little.

“Hey, we call it progress, sweetheart. We’ve come a long way since fig leaves.” I shot right back. I pulled on my boots and we went downstairs. I was a little worried about what the two of them might have been chatting about while I was in the shower, but I figured I hadn’t left them alone long enough for them to get into any real trouble. I never was that bright.

We walked across the hotel parking lot to an Applebee’s because wherever there’s a critical mass of hotels, there’s an Applebee’s, and the food is harmless, if not terribly interesting. And there’s beer. We grabbed a big round table in the corner and loaded up on bar food and beer. After we eased our appetites, I looked over at Michael and started the party.

“Okay, Michael. Who are we looking for and where do we find him?” I asked.

“Well, I’m not certain of his name, but I will know him when I encounter him. He is a young lay minister who frequents the downtown area.” He said.

“A lay minister? You mean like a street preacher?” Cain asked.

“I believe that is one way that people refer to his ministry, yes. He speaks from The Book to passersby downtown. He is very, how should I put this? Um, he’s very outgoing in his ministry.” Michael continued.

“So he’s an obnoxious street preacher in downtown Nashville, the big gold-plated buckle of the Bible Belt. That’s not gonna be easy to find.” I opined.

“As I mentioned, I will sense that he is the one we are searching for once we are near. For now, I suggest that we depart this fine dining institution and make our way downtown to begin our search for the young man in question.”

“Well, you boys have a goooood time quizzing street preachers. I’m sure that with Mikey’s spidey-sense in full bloom, you don’t need Myra and me to find one Bible-thumper, and we could use a little “girl time,” if you know what I mean.” Eve stood and started for the door, motioning for Myra to follow.

“I don’t know what you mean, and I think we should all stick together.” I said.

“He’s so cute when he tries to play leader, isn’t he?” Eve said. “C’mon honey, we’ll leave Emily with him to make sure he doesn’t get in too much trouble, and we’ll take Cain with us to make sure that we do. I hear there are a couple of bars in this town where they might play a little music. Let’s see if we can find one, and I’ll tell you more stories about Adam from the good old days.” With that, my first wife and my latest lover went off with my eldest son in tow. Cain looked back at me with a helpless look on his face as they headed to the door.

“Don’t get busted, I can’t afford bail for three!” I called out after them. Eve flipped me off as the hostess held the door for them. I paid the tab and Emily, Michael and I headed to the car.

I found a parking deck just off Broadway, because I figured if a street preacher was worth his salt, he’d hang out at one of the dens of iniquities that made up the redneck street of dreams. There were enough sins committed against the memories of mamas, pickup trucks, dogs and trains in a three-block stretch of downtown Nashville to make Lucky blush, so I figured it was just a matter of time before we found our guy.

Sometimes I take being right to a whole new level. We’d walked a couple of blocks when a body came flying out of a bar almost directly on top of us. A kid landed flat on his ass up against a newspaper box while a couple of neckless bouncers glared at us like they needed a little more ass to kick while another guy came out from inside the club and threw a Bible at the kid’s head. Michael leaned down and caught The Book before it could hit the ground, and handed it to the kid.

“Thanks. This was my dad’s. I’d hate for anything to happen to it. I guess they don’t really mean it when they call it an open mike night.” He just lay there on the sidewalk, leaning his head on the newspaper box like it was something that happened every night. Hell, for all I knew, it did happen every night.

“Why? What happened?” Emily looked all kinds of concerned for the kid, which immediately set of the Daddy warning bells in my head. The kid looked like ten miles of bad road, with a pierced lip and eyebrow, more hardware in his ears than Emily, Eve and Myra combined, a couple of armfuls of tattoos, and a T-shirt that said, in big jagged letters “Jesus Rocks” on the front. He wore jeans that looked like they’d been torn more from getting thrown out of bars than from work, and pair of scuffed Chuck Taylors on his feet. I hated his guts a little, I thought.

“I signed up for a slot on the open mike list, and when my time came, I took the chance to speak the word of the Lord to those gathered. The proprietors took some exception to my version of the open mike performance, and I was asked to leave. When I objected, well, you saw the results.” He sounded a little like Michael. I definitely hated his guts a little. Then I looked over at Emily again, and I saw a little glassy look in her eyes. Shit. She was smitten. Things only got worse when I looked at Michael, who was grinning like a cat with a mouthful of feathers. Shit.

“You gotta be kidding me.” I said to the angel.

“No, Adam. This is who we’re looking for. This young man is the Chosen. I can feel it.” Michael looked like he was about to wet himself. Emily looked like she was head over heels in puppy love, and I’m sure I looked like I’d just swallowed something rotten. I was gonna need a drink or ten to deal with this one.

“Alright, Junior. Get up, come with me and keep your mouth shut.” I reached down for the kid and hauled him to his feet. I put an arm around his shoulders and steered him halfway down the block into another bar. The bouncer gave me a look that said “If I hear one syllable of proselytizing, I’m gonna toss you out on your ass.” Ok, the bouncer probably didn’t actually think the word proselytizing; I might be giving him a little too much credit. Either way, I led Junior to a booth in the back and ordered four PBRs. We sat there in silence until our beers arrived, along with our cohorts.

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t allow alcohol to enter the sanctuary of my body.”

“Jesus turned water into wine. Now sit there and drink.” I was not in the mood for this, but it looked like I was going to have a conversation on faith and fact with a true believer. True believers give me gas.

Michael and Emily joined us in the booth, with Emily sitting next to me to better observe the tattooed and pierced messiah-in-training, and grabbed their drinks. Michael made a face at the beer, but after a look from me he wisely refrained from comment. I drained the first PBR in a long pull and motioned for the waitress to bring another round.

“Sir, I must insist. The body is a temple and I must honor my almighty Father by keeping it pure.” Junior was starting to wind me up a little, so I leaned forward and made sure I had his undivided attention.

“Look, kid. I’m gonna drink my next beer like I’m on a mission, which I am. Then I’m gonna nurse my third one while Michael and I tell you a little story. And I can pretty much guaran-damn-tee you that you’ll accept what we’ve got to tell you a little better if you’ve had a little booze to grease the mental wheels.” About then my second beer showed up, and I did indeed swallow it down with a certain intensity. I dropped the empty on the waitress’ tray before she had finished unloading the other three, and motioned for her to bring me another. “This time I promise to take my time, hon.” She gave me a little flounce of her cutoff shorts and headed back to the bar.

Junior looked from Michael to me and back again, studiously avoiding meeting Emily’s gaze. I was fine with that. I wasn’t interested in any budding puppy love, especially if he really was important to the “mission” we were on. When my third beer got there, I started talking.

“Alright kid, let’s start with the basics. What’s your name?” I said.

“Sidney. Sidney Joseph McEwen.”

“Alright, Sid,”

“Sidney. I don’t answer to Sid.” This kid was really going to irritate me. I could tell.

“Sidney, then. Sidney, how much do you know about the book of Genesis?” I figured that I may as well uncork the heavy stuff right off the bat.

“The book of Genesis is where we learn the origins of man, his dominion over women and all the beasts of the field, and…”

“Wait a minute, kid. Where did you get that stuff about dominion over women?” I interrupted.

“It’s clearly stated in Genesis that Eve was given unto Adam to be his mate and his servant, as were all the beasts of the kingdom.” Wow. Junior was gonna have some issues when he met Eve.

“Ok. Let’s start right there. Nobody ever gave anybody dominion over anybody else, and Eve was never anybody’s servant, I promise.” Emily had started to look pretty grumpy about the whole “servant” thing, but she settled back into the booth as I corrected the kid’s misconceptions.

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t mean to disrespect my elders, but are you really qualified to question the written Word of God the Father? I have dedicated my life to the study of the Bible, and I daresay I know the Book a little better than the average man on the street.” Okay, he’d brought out the smug. It as time to play a little rough.

I reached forward and grabbed his lip ring and pulled him close enough to feel my breath on his nose. “Listen, pincushion. A couple of points here. One: nobody under the age of fifty uses the word ‘daresay,’ especially not in a bar in Tennessee. Two: if you’re going to measure peckers, you’d better make sure you’re not whipping it out next to John Holmes. I’m not the average man on the street, and while I haven’t really dedicated much of my life to studying the Book, I’ve got more than a passing familiarity with the book of Genesis. Mostly because I. Was. Fucking. There.” I gave his ring a twist with each of the last few words for emphasis. When I let go of his mouth he bounced back to the booth and looked to Michael like he wanted to bolt, but the angel just smiled at him.

“I think you should listen to Adam, Sidney.” Michael finished his second beer and waved the waitress over. He motioned for another round, and Sid took the high road and polished off his drink.

“So. Let’s work from a point of common agreement: you don’t know shit about the book of Genesis, and probably not much more about the rest of that book you’ve been thumping on. So I’ll start at the beginning, or at least as much of it as I remember. A long time ago, there was a guy alone in a Garden. It was a nice garden, if a little boring with no one to talk to. Then one day, this chick appeared, and things got a lot more interesting. After a while with just the guy and the chick, the normal things happened and there were some more people. Then there was a snake, an apple, a really bad afternoon, a couple of brothers, a big rock, another really bad afternoon, and then the rest of the world happened. You with me so far?” The kid just sat there, looking at me like I was going to bite him, which I supposed was probably fair. I had meant to scare him a little, and maybe I got a bit out of hand. But he annoyed me, okay?

“Adam, let me try.” Michael began, but Emily jumped in before either of us could say another word.

“Sid, here’s the deal. This guy is Adam. That Adam. The whole Adam and Eve thing? He’s half of that dynamic duo. The blond guy next to you with the rapidly fading British accent? He’s the Archangel Michael, although he’s tucked away the flaming sword for the time being. We’re tying to save the world, and Michael says that you’re going to be very important to that. So are you in?” She certainly did have a way of cutting through all the bullshit.

“Um, if he’s…and he’s…” the kid pointed to me and Michael in turn “then…who…what are you?” He looked almost afraid of Emily’s answer.

“I’m his daughter, but otherwise I’m just a waitress from Texas who has been known to consort with the wrong crowd.” She pointed at me and took a swig of her beer. “And seriously, Dad, PBR? I’m sure they have import beers, even in this redneck shithole.”

“Just keepin’ it real, baby girl. Just keepin’ it real.” I watched the kid for trouble signs, but he just sat there, processing.

After a minute, the kid reached out, drained his beer, and waved the waitress over. When she got to the booth, he said “Four Gentleman Jack, two ice cubes. And another round of PBRs.” All of a sudden, the kid was a trained professional. He might be okay, after all. When she brought the drinks back, he slid a highball glass in front of each of us and raised his in a salute. “To saving the world” he said as he tossed back his drink and chased it with a beer.
“So, what do I do?” He asked after he downed a shot of firewater to fortify himself. “Do I have to fight a horde of unbelievers? Do I have to martyr myself for my beliefs? Do I have to sacrifice my eldest son, because I don’t have any kids, but I could have some if I need to.” I reached across the table and put my hand on his shoulder.

“Okay, kid, calm down. We’re not fighting any hordes, at least I hope not. And nobody’s martyring anybody or sacrificing anybody for any beliefs. At least not that we know of. Let’s just take a step back and recap. How much do you know about what got me and Eve kicked out of the Garden?”

“Well, I know that Eve was tempted by the serpent that was Satan, and that she was weak, and succumbed to the temptation of the serpent, and that because of the weakness of Eve all mankind has suffered…what’s so funny?” Even Michael was having a hard time stifling his laughter, and Michael didn’t really have a sense of humor. I was laughing too hard, so I just motioned for Emily to explain it to the kid.

“You see, it wasn’t quite like that, and since we all know Eve, hearing her described as weak was just, well, it’s pretty funny.” Em started.

“Yeah, and you don’t want to let her hear that version of events. Because she’s packing.” I finished.

“Well, that’s what happened! It says so right here in the…” After a second the kid realized that since he was sitting with what historians refer to as source material, he might want to think a bit before he told me what had happened. “This is going to take some getting used to.” He finished lamely.

“Yeah, it’s like that at first. Just imagine how fucked up it is to find out he’s your dad.” I know Em was trying to commiserate, but I wasn’t sure I liked the method.

“Okay, so it was like this. Eve made a Choice to take the fruit and bring it to me. And all through history there have been choices. Some have been big, deciding to invade Poland, like writing the Magna Charta, like pulling the sword out of the stone. And some choices have been small, like deciding to put the top down on the limo in Dallas, like picking the right horse for Paul Revere to ride, like deciding to go see a play at Ford’s Theatre. Those are small choices, with big consequences. But every once in a while there comes along a capital “c” Choice. The kind of choice that you know will alter the course of humanity for a long time to come. That’s the kind of Choice we’re talking about. Like when Eve took the fruit from Lucky,”

“Lucky?”

“Just go with it. Like taking the fruit from Lucky, Like Abel letting Cain kill him, like the Carpenter going with the soldiers in the garden at Gethsemane. Those Choices that you know when you’re making them will impact people for a long, long time after you make it. That’s what we’re coming up on right now, another Choice. The first one in probably a few hundred years, if not longer. And you’re the guy.”

“What do you mean, I’m the guy? What guy?” His voice had gotten a little high-pitched and thready, so I knew he understood what I meant. I decided that this would be a stupid time to start sugar-coating anything, so I just went right back to the sledgehammer.

“You’re the one who has to Choose.”

“What am I Choosing?” His eyes had gotten big, and he looked a little like a rabbit staring at a .22 rifle.

“We don’t know yet, we just know you’re the one who has to Choose. And the rest of the world will have to live with your Choice.”

“Sidney,” Michael moved in to try and soothe the frightened kid. “We know this is a lot to take in all at once, but you are very important to us, and to the world. We need you, Sidney. Will you come with us? Will you make the Choice?” There was weight in the angel’s words, and I could tell by the look on the kid’s face that he knew that if he said yes, he was committing to something a lot bigger than standing on a street corner singing psalms and trying to teach the Lord’s Prayer to a couple of drunks.

He sat there for a long moment, and I was glad to see he was taking some time with the idea. Taking on the fate of the world isn’t something that should be done lightly, even if you’re a little drunk. After a couple of minutes he sat up, finished off his beer, and looked me in the eye. “I’m in. Whatever it is my Lord has planned for me I will do to the best of my ability. I will serve Him however He requires.”

Yup, true believers are a pain in the ass.

I waved the waitress over for the check and Em went to the bathroom while I settled up. We figured we’d head back to the motel for the night and head out in the morning. Michael hadn’t yet deigned to share with us our next destination, telling me “all things in time” in that tone that made me want to punch him in the face again. But I restrained myself in light of our new addition and his potentially sensitive views on violence. And I didn’t want the angel bleeding all over the back seat of Myra’s Civic.
“Em, I want you and Junior to stay here. Keep the engine running and if we come out in a hurry, get us out of here pronto.” I said as I pulled into the lot and parked with the nose of the Civic pointed toward the road.

“No dice, Pop. I’m going in there with you.” She said, getting out of the car as soon as I put it in park.

“No way, kid. This could get ugly…”

“And if it does, you’re gonna need every pair of hands you can get. I’ve been in a few ugly bar fights in my day, and I know how to handle myself. I’ll make sure to get out of the way if things get too out of hand, but I’m coming with you.” I knew the look in her eye; I’d seen it in Myra’s eyes when she announced that she was coming with us on this little journey.

I figured there was no sense trying to persuade her, so I just said, “You still got your backup?”

“Yup.”

“Alright. Here’s the plan. Junior, you stay close to the door with the keys in your hand. Keep your head down and get your ass in the driver’s seat if we make a run for it. Michael, you stay on my left side and if we need that big fiery toothpick of yours, don’t waste any time making it appear.”

“Why am I to be on your left, Adam?” I had to give the angel credit, he didn’t protest, just went for the tactical questions.

“I’m right-handed, so I wanna make sure to keep that side clear if I need to do anything.” I reached into the trunk of the Civic and slid Cain’s piston into the back of my jeans, and pulled on a light jacket to hide the gun. I really hoped I didn’t have to use it, but it wouldn’t be the first time if it came to that. I looked around at my posse: a twenty-something waitress, a tattooed and pierced street preacher, and an archangel getting ready to storm a biker bar in Tennessee with the oldest man on the planet. This had to be the most fucked up rescue effort in history.

The bar was darker inside than I expected, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the smoky gloom, even though it was night outside. We made our way over to a corner table where Cain, Eve and Myra sat warily watching the rest of the bar’s occupants.

“Hey kids, what’s up?” I asked as I pulled up a chair. I sat on Cain’s left elbow, with my chair turned around so I was leaning on the back of the chair. This gave me a good view of most of the bar and gave me something at hand to throw in a hurry if it came to that.

“Hey, Pop. How’s life?” Cain and I bumped fists, and after the waitress took our drink orders (tequila shots and beers all around, the only way to go into potential combat) he leaned over and said in a low voice “The big bald guy came on to Mom when she was picking songs at the jukebox. She was a little, um, enthusiastic in her rebuff.”

I put my head in my hands and asked “What did she do?”

Eve piped up with “Nothing! Well, not much, anyway. I slapped his face a little, and that was no big deal. He laughed, and his buddies laughed at him, and I laughed an it was all good.”

“Then why the panicked phone call?” I asked Myra.

“I wasn’t panicked. I was simply…concerned. But it wasn’t over that.” She said.

“What happened next?” I asked.

“He kinda didn’t take the hint. And then he kinda grabbed me. And I might have kneed him in the balls a little.” I groaned a bit, and then looked over at Cain.

“And you had to get involved at this point, right?” I asked him.

“Well, when he got to his feet he was pretty pissed. And his buddies were really giving him shit, and he looked like he was gonna take a swing at Mom, so I might have stepped in.” He at least looked chagrined about the whole mess.

“So at this point you’ve decked the behemoth, Cain has defended your virtue, and all is right with the world. So would you mind telling me why in the seven hells you’re still here?” I will admit to getting a little irritated, but I really wasn’t looking forward to getting punched. Immortal does not equate to having no pain receptors.

“My songs aren’t through yet.” I looked at her incredulously, and she calmly went on “I paid three bucks for six songs on the jukebox, and they aren’t done yet. I told Myra to give you a call and tell you to meet us here for a couple of drinks, I can’t imagine those idiots are going to cause me any more trouble tonight.” That might have been the most ludicrously contrary thing I’d heard in a couple of centuries. And it was 100% pure Eve.

“So you just wanted us to come over and have a drinky-drink while your songs played out on the jukebox, and if a bar fight happened to break out, all the better?” I’ll further admit to snide to go with my irritated, but the two so often go hand in hand.

“Pretty much. You must be the Chosen. Good luck with that. I’d drink more, if I were you. And once upon a time, I was.You, that is. I’m sorry, how rude of me. I’m Eve.” Eve held out her hand to Junior, who took it wordlessly. I think the whole scene might have been a little much for him. It was a little much for me, too, and it didn’t look like it was going to get any better when four mammoth bikers lurched over to our table, including the mountain of flesh and jailhouse ink that Eve said she kicked in the balls. My night was getting better and better.

“Hey.” The biggest one said as they stood in front of our table. He was at least 6’4” and 300 lbs. if he was an ounce. He looked like a refugee from a ZZ Top video, if there was a video where some monster ate all the members of ZZ Top and wandered around with their beards. His gut was barely constrained by a Harley-Davidson t-shirt, and he wore a black leather vest. All of them wore matching vest. Great, they were sporting colors. And my mood continued to improve. I didn’t see any indications of firearms, but most of them had long hunting knives at their sides. I really hate getting stabbed. Aside from the pain and bleeding, it puts big holes in my shirts.

“Hey.” I said. I didn’t stand, just sat there and looked at him.

“She your old lady?” He pointed at Eve.

“Not so much these days, but she used to be. Why, you want a date?”

He let out a laugh, making his massive belly shake not so much like a bowl full of jelly but more like a jell-o mold full of cottage cheese. “No. I wouldn’t touch her with Tiny’s dick and Spider pushing. But she needs to learn some manners.”

Tiny? Spider? Where do they get these names, out of a book? “I’ve been telling her the same thing for longer than I can remember. If you want to try, go right ahead. But I hear one of your boys already gave that a shot and it didn’t work out so well.”

“Yeah, and Tiny wants an apology.” He jerked a thumb at the one he called Tiny, and in a stunning fit of originality and irony, Tiny was the biggest son of a bitch I think I’d ever seen outside of professional sports. He was half a head taller than ZZ, whose name I’d never gotten, and if he could walk through a door without turning sideways, it was only because it was a double door. I could only imagine the pain and suffering his engineer boots endured with his every step.

“Well, tell Tiny to get in line, because there’s a lot of people looking for apologies from that one, and they’ve all been disappointed for a long time.” I said.

“Not from her. We got no hard feelings towards her. Tiny’s been insulted by him.” And he pointed at Cain. Shit. I probably could have talked them out of a beef with Eve, but this was probably going to lead to someone getting hurt.

“What did he do?” I asked before I could even think.

“He put a knife in Tiny’s face and said some nasty things about Tiny. You don’t get to pull a knife on an Outlaw in our bar and just walk out. That just don’t happen.”

“I understand. This shouldn’t have happened. Cain, apologize.”

“I’m sorry, Tiny.”

There. We good? Cain’s apologized, Tiny feels better, and we can all just have another round, right? “ I motioned for the bartender to set everybody up with another round.

“It ain’t that simple.” Of course it wasn’t.

“Why not?” I might as well keep playing ignorant, as long as I could try and keep everybody’s blood on the inside.

“Tiny’s been insulted. His manhood has done been questioned. And that just don’t happen. Your boy here is gonna have to take a beat down for that.”

“Well, then we have a problem.” I stood up at that point, and Cain, Michael and Eve stood with me. Emily moved Junior and Myra over closer to the door, and I thought I saw her reach up her sleeve for something that might have been shiny.

“I guess we probably do, don’t we?” Mammoth replied, and I gripped the neck of the beer bottle in front of me. But before I could step forward and swing, I heard a thump beside me and looked over to see Junior on his knees, reciting a Psalm.

“ThelordismyshepherdIshallnotwant.Hemakethmetoliedowningreenpastures” he recited quickly, and in the second I gave him my attention, Mammoth stepped up and cracked a fist the size of a Honey Baked Ham across my jaw. I spun around and found my face oddly pressed up against the wall of the bar. I leaned there for half a second before I realized that was what was holding me up, and I pushed off the wall into the fray.

And in that half a second, a melee had erupted. Eve produced the fat end of a pool cue from somewhere, probably that big damn bag she carried everywhere, and laid into Tiny, obviously deciding that he was her bitch du jour. Michael was being soundly pummeled by the other one, I suppose he was Spider, because he had black spider tattoos on the backs of both hands. It made for an interesting picture as one spidered hand was wrapped around Michael’s throat pinning him to the wall while the other spider bounced off his face again and again.

Cain had grabbed a pair of bottles off the table and beaned Mammoth with both of them after he sucker-punched me. Then he actually jumped onto the table for a second, which proved to be a poor choice when the center pillar of the table toppled, taking him to the floor with Mammoth underneath him. He just kept waling on the biker as they went down. I looked around, saw that I didn’t have anybody to hit for a second, and yelled at Emily “Get Junior and your mom outta here!”

She didn’t wait, grabbing Junior by the collar and yanking him to his feet. She shoved Myra and Sidney towards the door, and stepped in front of them to punt one of the bouncers square in the nuts when he made to stop their exit. Eve took a second from bludgeoning Tiny to throw her truck keys to Myra. “Get both cars running!” I shouted as I picked up the chair I’d been sitting in. I cleared my throat to get Spider’s attention, and when he took a second from pounding Michael’s face into tapioca, I broke the chair into splinters across his head.

He fell backwards almost in slow motion, taking out another table as he toppled like a redwood. Michael slumped to the floor, and I could almost see the little birds circling his head. It would have been a lot funnier if I hadn’t looked up just then to see a half-dozen more thugs heading our way, along with a pissed-looking bartender swinging a baseball bat. I thought for a second about pulling the pistol, but since none of them had done anything worse than a little bludgeoning so far, I figured I didn’t need to escalate things. After all, they couldn’t really do any lasting damage to any of the four of us, so it wasn’t worth it to me to kill anybody over a little bar scuffle.

Until four of them came back into the bar with Emily, Myra and Junior in tow. Junior was tossed over one guy’s shoulder unconscious, and it took two of them to hold Emily back. But when I saw Myra with a bloody lip, I kinda went nuts. Not Wolverine slashing people to pieces nuts, but close. I went straight at the four of them, and that didn’t go well for the guy who got in my way. I just kinda grabbed him by the neck and walked through him, if that makes any sense. I wasn’t thinking too clearly, and I just know that one minute he was in front of me, and the next I had stepped on his chest on my way to the door. I pulled up in front of the one holding Myra, and he let her go.

Emily broke free of the guys holding her and helped her mother into a chair. The fourth one put Junior down face-first on a table, and then I had four of them, all to myself. This might be fun after all.

“Which one of you hit her?” I pointed to Myra.

“Me. What you gonna do about it?” He was about 5’11, maybe 180 pounds and looked like the type to hit girls and bash bigger guys over the head from behind. He had a patchy beard and close-cropped hair that needed a wash.

“I’m gonna save you for last.” With that I swung at the one on my left, catching him full in the nose and completely by surprise. There’s a lot to be said for martial arts and flashy kicks and throws, but at the end of the day, if you break a guy’s nose, he’s out of action for the next few minutes, at least. The guy dropped like a sack of wet concrete, and I ducked as one of his buddies threw a big roundhouse punch at my ear. When I dropped to one knee, I was at eye level with his belt buckle, so I grabbed it and put my shoulder in his gut as I stood up, taking the guy up onto my shoulder. I spun him around a few times to clear some space and then backed up fast into the nearest wall. That mashed his head between my back and the wall, and he stopped struggling. I tipped his feet backwards over my shoulder, and he went down with a thump.

I looked over for the third guy, but he had all he could handle with Emily, who apparently carried pepper spray in her purse. It looked like it hurt when she got him in the face, but she’d obviously learned more hanging around the Prince of Darkness than just cards, because when the thug opened his mouth to scream, she squirted another shot right in his mouth. He clawed his way to the door with one hand on his mouth and another over his eyes, and I turned my attention to the little shit who’d decked my girlfriend.

He was wearing a wife-beater and no vest, so I knew he was just a hanger-on, a wannabe. Good. I didn’t want to take on the whole bar if I broke the little bastard, and that was kinda where my mind was headed right then. I reached out and grabbed him by the straps on his tank top and pulled him into me. When his face was just a couple inches away from mine I said in a low voice, “Tell me if this hurts.”

Then I kneed him in the balls as hard as I could. As he doubled over I grabbed both ears and rammed his face into my knee, and then pulled him upright by his ears again. I took his chin in my left hand and reared back with my right to tee off on his jaw with a huge haymaker when I heard a huge crash from behind me.

“ENOUGH!” The Voice came from where I’d left Michael, but it didn’t sound anything like the meek Archangel I knew and usually wanted to run through a wood chipper. Instead, this was the Voice that commanded the armies of Heaven in the war against Lucypher. This was the Voice that meted out God’s own Justice across the land. This was the Voice that almost made me wet myself.

I turned, slowly, and looked to where the Voice was coming from, and it was Michael. Well, to say it was Michael is kinda like saying that The Hulk was Bruce Banner, like Superman was Clark Kent. It was The Archangel Michael, which bore about as much resemblance to the thin, fair-skinned little man that had gotten his face pummeled in a few seconds ago as I did to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was in full-on War Seraph mode, with 9’ of angelic wing spread across the bar. He was almost 7’ tall, and had ripped most of his clothes when he expanded, adding to the Hulk metaphor. Gone was the mild-mannered little humanoid, and in his place stood the Sword of Heaven. Oh yeah, and the sword wasn’t just a title, he held a 5’ long two-handed sword that was rimmed with white fire. I don’t know if it was hot, but it definitely had shattered the table that was in front of him, because it lay on the floor in a dozen or more pieces. Michael had apparently tired of the ruckus, and he had decided to lay down the law.

Nobody moved for a long moment as the immortal humans looked at the angel, the bikers looked at us, and Emily looked at Junior’s bloody nose. Michael cast his gaze across the mute assemblage and said, “Good. Now that you’re done making such an awful racket, would it be possible for my companions and I to leave?”

No one said a word, but anyone standing or lying anywhere near the door opened a wide path. Michael looked around again and said, “Good. I assume there will be no problem with the bill? Excellent. Have a splendid evening.” With that, his sword vanished, his wings folded into nothingness, and he was once again the nattily dressed British poof that came upon me outside of Myra’s restaurant. He started towards the door, collecting Junior, Emily and Myra along the way. He stopped just before the door and looked back at me, Cain and Eve.

“Coming, children?” He asked, like a disappointed teacher. Cain and I let go of the guys we were about to pound on and headed for the door. Eve took one last regretful look around, as if she could see in her mind’s eye all the pretty mayhem that Michael was putting a halt to, then she gave one last clout to the guy she’d been pounding, put the pool cue back in her voluminous shoulder bag, and followed us out into the night.

We got back to the hotel without further incident, and Eve headed across the street to the gas station to pick up a case of beer. We were all still pretty wound up over the events at the bar, so Cain picked the lock to the outdoor pool and we sat around outside drinking beer and soaking our feet in the pool for a little while to chill out after an eventful day. Junior had started to come around while in the car, and he just sat there at first with his jeans rolled up, feet soaking in the pool while the rest of us told lies about the size of the guys we beat up. Except Michael. He was sitting on one of those pool lounge chairs all by himself looking down at his hands, and then looking up at the sky like he was waiting for an answer from Father. Eventually his moping started to bring me down, so I went over to him with a fresh beer for each of us.

“Nice job today. We really could have gotten our asses kicked if you hadn’t stepped in when you did. And worse, some of the mortals might have gotten really hurt.” I started there, figuring if that wasn’t what he was moping over, he’d tell me. Turns out I got it in one. I was really starting to get a handle on this whole angelic therapy business.

“I’m not supposed to do that.”

“Do what? Keep people from getting hurt?”

“Interfere with the lives of normal people.” I laughed so hard I almost fell off my chaise at that one.

“Are you kidding me? You guys have interfered with my life almost from the beginning!”

“Yes, and you’re the reason for the rule. You and Eve. We were so involved in your lives early on that you were never really normal, so it was decided that we should remain aloof from humanity, to allow you to thrive or fail on your own.”

“Yeah, but what you did today wasn’t like that. You didn’t cause any great changes in the fabric of space and time, or whatever junk the sci-fi dorks would spew about here. You just broke up a bar fight. And none of us can die, and none of us were going to kill anybody, not even Eve. So there’s no butterfly effect going on, or any other Ashton Kutcher movie, either.” I could tell that hung him up a little, so I promised myself if he stuck around after this whole mess was over, and if I was still feeling uncharacteristically charitable towards him, that I’d sign him up for his very own Twitter account so he could be just as inanely involved with the lives of celebrities as anyone else.

“But I didn’t get involved to save lives, or to avenge a wrong. I drew upon the power of Heaven because it felt good. Nothing more. I enjoyed it, Adam. And I’m not supposed to do that. I’m supposed to remain aloof and impartial.”

“Yeah, but that’s boring.”

“What?”

“If you’ve learned anything hanging out with us the past few days, it oughta be that it’s a lot more interesting to be right in the middle of things. Living life, like it was meant to be lived. Being human, even if you’re not, is about living, not observing. Maybe the form’s getting to you a little. Maybe you’re getting some corruption by playing human so long, like an actor that can’t get out of character once the play’s over. But really, when you look at the big picture, other than some cheap bar furniture, what did we permanently damage?”

“Well, nothing, I suppose.”

“Alright then. So look, it was just another night for those guys. They’re a biker gang, Michael. They get in fights in bars. It’s what they do. It’s kinda like Eve irritating me, it’s her whole purpose in life. In a day or so they won’t even remember you Hulking out or your flaming sword. They’ll chalk it all up to too many Jagermeister shots and too many comic books on the back of the toilet. So no harm, no foul. Alright?”

“Alright.”

“So we done with the mopey angel face?” I made a goofy face like you would talking to a little kid, and the silly poof actually chuckled at me.

“You know you’re somewhat amusing at times, Adam.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure there are days when you’re not an insufferable assclown yourself.” I pulled him up and said, “Let’s get another beer.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, how exactly can you drink this swill?”

“You think this is swill? Try mead sometime. At least there are no obvious rat bits in the beer anymore. I count anything without rat bits as downright palatable.” I led him over to the rest of my merry band of immortals, Chosen ones and waitresses, and we sat on the concrete with everybody else.

“What did I miss?” I asked as I popped open another Keystone Light tallboy. It looked like Eve couldn’t decide what brand of shitty domestic beer to buy, so she bought an assortment of probably three or four cases. Probably a good move on her part. This was shaping up to be the kinda night that needed a lot of fortification.

“We were just explaining our odd little family tree to Junior here. He was pretty familiar with you and me, and Cain of course, but it took a little convincing for him to understand that Emily is your daughter.” Eve said.

“Why do you all call me Junior? My name is Sidney Joseph McEwen, and there’s no Junior appended to that.” Junior asked.

“Well, kid. When we first met you said you didn’t like to be called Sid. And I’m guessing you probably don’t go by Joe or Joey, either.” I replied.

“That is correct, sir.”

“So Junior it is. Because I can’t really look at somebody with a couple of armfuls of ink and a face that can’t get through airport security because of all the metal in your head, and call you Sidney. For one thing, androgynous names bug me. And for another, guys named Sidney should all be middle-aged with pipes and leather patches on their elbows. So pick one: you can be Sid, Joe, Joey or Junior. And you need another beer.” I dug a PBR out of one of Eve’s shopping bags and tossed it to the kid. He caught it on the fly and popped the top. Good to see he’d gotten over all that “body is a temple” crap. That could make for tedious travel.

“I guess I’ll take Sid, then. It was what my mother always wanted me to be called, after all.” He took a long swig of his beer and leaned back on his elbows, looking up at the night sky. Well, what of it that could be seen through the orange glow of the parking lot lights. “Is it always like this?” He asked after a minute or two of thought.

“Is what always like what?” I figured if nobody else needed elaboration, that I sure did.

“Being around you. Is it always so,” he took a minute to search for a word that fit and still wouldn’t piss me off, I guess, “exciting?”

“Nah. Usually there’s just a lot of knitting. And the occasional scintillating night of Jenga.” Eve threw that one in.

“But seriously, we don’t go into every town looking to get into bar fights,” I started.

“Speak for yourself.” Interrupted Eve. “I personally try to get into a minimum of one bar fight per ten business days. Otherwise I get cranky.”

“And how would anyone tell when you get cranky, Eve?” I asked.

“I break more people when I’m cranky, dear. Remember Egypt?” Yeah, I did. Everybody thinks it was time that knocked the nose off the Sphinx. Not so much. Eve can convince some folks to do all sorts of stupid stunts for her amusement. That one took seventy Egyptian slaves and entire night, but when she was done, the Sphinx had a moustache. That did not go over well with the current pharaoh, one of the Ramses, I think. Anyway, long story.

“Anyway. Look, Sid. The fact of the matter is, we haven’t been together that long. Eve and I had a disagreement a few years ago and we haven’t seen much of each other until a few days ago. The same could be said for Cain and me, and I kinda bailed on Myra before Emily was born. So we really haven’t spent a whole lot of time together. So, uh, welcome to the party.” I finished kinda lamely and went into Eve’s shopping bag for another beer.

“So, Sid. What’s your mother like?” Emily to the rescue. I was really starting to like having that kid around.

“Well, you know, she’s an ordinary mom, I guess. She works most days, watches reality TV most nights. She and some friends from work do a girls’ night out thing a couple Fridays a month, and every once in a while she dates. Nothing too serious, I guess. I try to get by her place on Sundays for supper, but something tells me I’m probably gonna miss this week.”

“Good call, kid.” Cain said around the mouth of his beer bottle.

“So what am I supposed to do? I mean, you said something about a Choice, but I don’t think I really understood exactly what I was supposed to do.” The kid looked like he had finally gotten it out, what he had wanted to ask all night. Too bad I didn’t have any answers for him. I looked over at Eve, thinking if I could, I’d defer to the one who’d actually made a Choice, but it was Cain that chimed in.

“We don’t know yet. You never know the moment of your Choice until it’s upon you. I didn’t really realize that mine had happened until it was all over, and by then it was too late to overthink. That’s when it works out well, I guess. When you don’t overthink it.”

“Yeah. It’s one of those things that comes on you and you just make a decision. If it’s really a capital-C Choice, then you’ll probably get a glimpse of the future behind both options, and then you’ll make up your mind. There will be a representative of both sides there, they’ll each plead their case, and you’ll Choose. And the world will live with the consequences.” Eve finished her explanation, which was more than I’d ever heard her talk about her decision to take the Fruit, and polished off the last of her beer. “And with that, I’m going swimming. Anybody with me?” She pulled off her jeans and jumped in the pool in her t-shirt and panties. The water felt good splashing over me, but I was too lost in thought about what she and Cain had said to really enjoy it.

“I didn’t bring a suit.” Protested Emily, but then she skinned off her jeans and dove in just like Eve. Myra followed soon after, then Cain. So I was left there with the Chosen one and the archangel as my family and girlfriend swam around.

“Why aren’t you in there, Michael?” I asked.

“I, um, I don’t know how to swim.” The angel admitted sheepishly. I guffawed at this, then thought about it for a second. He hadn’t had a physical form for very long, so he’d never needed to learn how to swim. It made a kind of sense, if you thought about it. I didn’t think about it for very long, just stood up, walked over to him, and shoved him into the pool. He spluttered, then came up shaking water out of his face.

“No time like the present to learn, Mikey. Enjoy.” Since I knew he couldn’t drown, I left him to figure out the doggy paddle on his own and walked back to sit next to Sid.

“Penny for ‘em, kid.” I said as I sat down. He took a long minute to gather his thoughts, and then it all started to flow.

“What if I screw it up? I mean, I’ve spent so much of my life as a punk kid, getting all pierced and tatted up to try and be different. And now you guys come along and say that I am different, but that it doesn’t have anything to do with how I look, or with the fact that I like punk music and still believe the Bible, or any of that. That I matter just because I’m me. That kinda makes me think my whole life is a waste, you know. I’ve spent all this time inventing myself, and now you guys tell me that fate of the world is in my hands, and it’s got nothing to do with any of the stuff I’ve tried to become.” He looked almost anguished, and I guess I could understand. It couldn’t have been easy being different in the South growing up.

“I dunno, kid. All that stuff you did probably has more to do with you being Chosen than we’ll ever know. Well, any of us except for Michael, who kinda has the hotline to the Father. But he ain’t talkin’. So you gotta think that everything you went through went into making you who you are. All the decisions you made and all the ones that people around you made, those are all part of what make you unique. So without any of that stuff, you’d just be another funny-looking street preacher getting your ass kicked in bars. If that helps at all.”

“It does. Thanks. But how will I know when it’s time to Choose? And how will I make the right decision?”

“I don’t have a single idea. But if you come up with the answers, will you let me know?”

“Why?”

“Seems you’re not the only one with a Choice coming up, Junior. I’m not just chaperoning this ride because I’m older than everybody else. Apparently my time as the observer is about over, and I’m gonna have to make a Choice of my own. And I don’t know a damn thing more about it than you do.”

“But what about the last time?”

“What last time?”

“When you chose to take the fruit from Eve. When you were thrown out of the Garden of Eden.”

“That was Eve’s choice, not mine. Me taking a piece of fruit from my wife was a little-C choice. She’d already been confronted with the big one, and made it.”

“Do you regret it?”

“What, getting tossed out of the Garden?”

“Yeah. Do you?”

“Every single day, kid. Every. Single. Day.”

“What was it like?”

“It was a lot like you’d expect from the stories. It was peaceful, mostly. We had plenty to do, we were raising crops and learning about the world. We were exploring our surroundings, and exploring each other. You know, doing what young people do. There were lots of animals around, and we got to play with some fairly exotic pets, but it wasn’t all sweetness and light. It’s not like we had pet lions babysitting antelopes and everybody was vegetarian. The animals still had to eat, and so did we. I killed my fair share of beasties, and it’s a lot easier now to go to the grocery store than it was to butcher a water buffalo. And when there are only a few people in the world, there’s not a lot of help to get a water buffalo onto dry land so you can butcher it in the first place. So it was nice, but the best thing was just being around the Father.”

“So you really were in direct contact with God?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I mean, he didn’t come down and walk around in a long white robe or anything, but his Presence was always there. And if I had a question, I asked. And he answered. Now sometimes his answer was ‘you’re a bright boy, Adam, figure it out,’ but it was an answer. That’s what I miss the most, just that connection.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” We sat there in silence for a few minutes before he piped up again.

“Adam?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“Cain.”

“Yeah, what about him?” I was afraid we might be heading into dangerous territory here, but I figured I owed it to the kid to let him know about the folks he was supposed to save the world with.

“Did he really murder his brother?”

“Abel? Yeah, he did. As far as we can tell, Cain actually invented murder. Not many people can claim to have their own Commandment, but my boy was always an overachiever.”

“Do you take anything seriously? I mean, he killed your son, and now you’re travelling with him. I don’t think I get that.”

“I probably don’t either to be real honest with you. But you gotta remember, in addition to having killed my son, he is my son. And I love him. That’s what being a father means, you love the little shit no matter what. I managed to forget that fact for a long time, but I’ve been reminded here recently.”

“So is he a good guy or a bad guy?”

“Yes.”

“To which?”

“Both. Look, there’s no question that Cain killed Abel. And there’s no question that it wasn’t the best thing that’s ever happened in any of our lives, but it just might be that it had to happen for a bigger reason. And I’m not gonna pretend to be smart enough to understand that reason, but after all these years, I’m not gonna ask too many questions, either.”

“Do you trust him?”

“With my life.”

“Okay. I guess that’ll have to do.”

“Good deal. So what’s your story, kid? What is it about you that makes you the Chosen? Are you the offspring of a Seraph and a mortal woman? Are you the Dahli Lama of Tennessee? What is it?”

“I’ve been asking myself that question ever since you picked me up off the sidewalk. I mean, I hate to question the wisdom of an angel, but do you think it’s possible that Michael may have picked the wrong guy?”

“Nah. He’s been too smug about the whole thing for him to harbor any doubts. And his intel is usually pretty good on these things.”

“Okay, then. Well I have no idea. I try to live a righteous, Christian life. Maybe that has something to do with it?”

“Can’t imagine it hurts, but it probably isn’t a big part of the process. After all, I’m not the least bit Christian, and apparently I’ve got to make a Choice soon myself.”

“You’re not a Christian? How can that be? I mean, you’re Adam, you’re right out of the Old Testament yourself. How can you not…” I cut him off there.

“Junior. Take a deep breath. Now let’s remember, I am Old Testament. I predate Christianity by about 50 millennia, give or take a couple thousand years. I met the Carpenter. The Nazarene was a good kid, but he wasn’t the first or the last to speak that speech, so I’m not inclined to follow some hippie kid just because he says the Father loves us all. I know the true face of my Father’s love, and I know I don’t need an intermediary to get me there. All I need to do to talk to God it to talk to him. I don’t need to do it just on Sundays, or just in rooms with a lotta stained glass, or just through a mouthpiece. Now I liked the Carpenter. He did some good things, and he had a fantastic speaking voice. But I’m a little more old school in my religion. A little more direct, if you get my drift.”

“I never thought about that.”

“You probably never thought you’d be sitting around a swimming pool drinking beer with the main characters from Genesis, a dog-paddling archangel and a couple of waitresses from Texas, either.”

“Good point. Hey, thanks for talking to me. I was kinda freaking out a little.”

“No sweat. I’ve gotten kinda used to people freaking out lately. Including me.”

“You?”

“Yeah, me. Look, kid. I don’t really know what we’re coming up on right now, if it’s the end times, or what. But there’s a lot of new and different stuff happening, and when you’ve been around as long as I have, you some to understand that there really isn’t that much new stuff to happen. So when new things come in clumps, it’s a little disconcerting.”

“Makes sense. Now, um…I guess I’ve just got one more big question?”

“Shoot.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“You know, I have no idea.”

“Maybe I can help with that.” Shit. That was not the voice I wanted to hear.

“Hello, Lucky.”

“Hello Adam. Hello, Sidney.” He looked for all the world like something out of a Hemingway novel, all white linen suit and Panama hat. The sunglasses were there, of course, the sunglasses were always there.

“What are you doing here, Lucky? And isn’t Michael going to have some objection to your being here?” I asked, looking around to see if the archangel had clued in that his eternal adversary had joined our little pool party.

“I’m here to meet young Sidney, of course. And I could care less what that self-important ass objects to. Hello, Sidney. Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m…” I was probably going to fall into the pool and drown myself laughing if he said anything about wealth and taste, but that was the moment that Michael took note of our new addition.

“LUCYPHER!!!!” He bellowed, rising straight out of the pool like a missile from a submarine. His benign human guise vanished in a thought, and what we got was a whole lot of pissed off archangel, charging across the top of the water at Lucky swinging a six-foot long flaming sword. I shoved Junior into the pool and dove in after him, swimming as fast as we could to get away from the coming scuffle.

If you’re never seen an angel in their natural form, then it’s a little hard to explain. But since I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen one, I’ll give it my best shot. Think a glowing blue-white Shaq, only bigger. A lot bigger. Like seven and a half or eight feet tall. Bald, a little like the blue guy from the Watchmen movie, only bigger, and without genitalia. Leave me alone, it’s the kinda thing you’re gonna notice. There are wings, and they are huge. Humans can stretch out their arms and the distance from fingertip to fingertip equals their height, within an inch or so. When angels stretch out their wings, the distance from wingtip to wingtip is more like ten or twelve feet.
So now picture a glowing eight foot tall Shaq with a 12’ wingspan running across the surface of a swimming pool swinging a sword that would give Braveheart a little twinge in his kilt, if you get my drift. I think you can see why we dove for cover, literally.

To his credit, if Lucky had veins, there was ice water in them, because he didn’t flinch in the face of the Angelic Express about to run him down. He just stood there patiently, and when Michael got close, he did some kind of judo/ninja thing and suddenly Michael was flying across the parking lot. The wings helped him control his descent, and he made the turn before he crashed through anything important, like our car, the front of the hotel, a random fence or two, anything like that. As Michael wheeled around and flew back at Lucky for another shot, Lucky unfurled wings of his own and took to the sky.

“Is this the place, then?” He asked, stopping Michael cold in midair with one sentence.

“Why are you here?” replied a very pissed off angel.

“I wish to speak with the Chosen. Do you then change the terms of our meeting?” Lucky persisted.

“You must leave.” Said Michael.

“We agreed that I could speak with the Chosen as often as I desire until the Choice is made. Do you break the terms of our agreement? Shall we finish this now?” I wasn’t sure what Lucky was talking about, but the formality in his tone led me to believe that this was a pretty big deal.

“I do not. Our agreement stands.” Michael said through clenched teeth.

“Then leave me to talk with the Chosen. As is my right.” With that, Lucky proved that he was either incredibly brave or had a lot of faith in Michael’s word, because he turned his back on the sword-wielding giant glowing guy and glided down to where Junior and I were pulling ourselves out of the pool. Michael let out a low growl of frustration and flew straight up until he vanished from sight. I was pretty sure there were going to be some cell phone calls to the National Enquirer around Nashville that evening. I stepped between Lucky and the kid, who was trying to look brave but only managing to look like a very wet, very scared skinny kid with a face full of hardware and expensive ink on his arms.

“Lucky, what do you want with the kid? I’m not gonna let you hurt him.” I wasn’t feeling too secure in my own ability to stop him, but I figured it was worth a shot. It worked about as well as expected. Lucky laughed as he landed on the edge of the pool and came over to us. He reached into the bag of beer, popped the top on a PBR, and tossed one to me as he sat down on one of the pool loungers.

“Sit down, Adam. We both know you can’t hurt me, and if I wanted to hurt you, I’d find much more interesting ways of doing it than just kicking your ass all over the parking lot. I want to talk to Sidney here, and you might as well hear this as well.” I sat. He was right, and I knew it. And he knew I knew it, so there wasn’t a whole lot of point in trying to act all tough against the First of the Fallen.

“What was all that about?” I asked, waving my hand in the general direction of the pool.

“That? Oh. Well, Michael and I have had a disagreement for a long time, and before too long, we’re going to find out which one of us was right. And he gets to be the one to set the place for our final duel. I just asked him if he wanted it to be here. He decided against it.” Just as I was about to demand more details, I saw a shadow move across the water, and I looked up.

“Eve, No!” I got the words out, but not in time as Eve came up behind Lucky with a sawed-off shotgun and shot him square in the back. The sound was enormous, and I shut my eyes against the muzzle flash and any Lucky-bits that happened to spray on my face.

I opened my eyes a second later and Lucky was still sitting there, calm as could be, with a little grin twitching the corner of his mouth. He stood, turned slowly around, and reached out to Eve, snatching the shotgun from her hands like you’d take a lollipop from a toddler. Then he wrapped both arms around her and picked her up, twirling her around and laughing like they’d just been reintroduced at a party.

“Oh, Eve, I have missed you! No one since the Garden has had such a fire! I am sorry I haven’t called on you since then, but I’ve been dreadfully busy. You know, wars to starts, pestilence to spread, famine to sow, death to deal, and all that awful pale-horse Revelation garbage. But it’s good to see you, and I promise to come chat with you and little Cain in a few moments, once I’m done talking to the boys here.” With that, he spun a shocked Eve around, patted her on the butt, and shoved her over to where Cain and the other women were standing staring at us.

“Yeah. About that, Lucky. We might want to move this conversation inside. After all, you did just have a giant frigging glowing angel fly off over the pool, and Eve just shot you. Those things tend to attract attention these days. So why don’t we all adjourn to my room, and you can tell everybody what you’ve got to say to me and Junior?” I picked up the bag of beer, grabbed Junior by an arm, and started making my way into the hotel.

“Probably a good idea, Adam. The local constabulary may be making an appearance soon, and it’s probably better if I’m not seen. Something about a bar fire earlier this evening…” He followed us into the hotel, and I stood waiting for the elevator with the Prince of Darkness and a twenty-something tattooed redneck street preacher who was supposed to save the world. If he could keep his eyes off my daughter’s tits long enough to do it.

When we got to the room, Lucky led Junior inside, grabbed the bag of beer, and shoved me backwards out into the hall, shutting the door firmly in my face. I hammered on the door for a minute, but Lucky just called out a few profanities and I finally gave up. I walked down the hall to the room Eve was sharing with Emily, and knocked on the door. They let me in after a second, and I joined Eve, Emily, Myra and Cain in the small room. It was more than a little cramped in there with just a couple of beds and one chair, but we all managed to find someplace more or less comfortable.

After a long moment Emily piped up. “What do you think he’ll do to Sidney?”

“Nothing.” I replied. “If he wanted to hurt the kid there are a lot better ways, sneakier ways that won’t get him in deep shit with Father. My guess is he’s telling the truth, that he just wants to talk to the kid. He’s probably got a lot riding on whatever Choice the kid makes, and he’s looking for an edge.”

“You actually think he’s telling the truth? He’s the Father of Lies? His name is synonymous with deception and misdirection? What makes you think that he’s telling the truth?” Myra asked incredulously.

“Because it’s what we don’t expect. I’ve seen him use this trick before. He tells you the truth when you expect him to lie, and then he can lie with more impunity when it suits his purposes.” I said. “He’ll probably keep the kid in there for a while, make friends with him, fill his head full of just enough truth to confuse him, and send him back to us thinking that Lucky’s just a guy who’s gotten a bad rap in history.”

“Yeah, he’s a fuckin’ prince.” Eve muttered.

“Yeah. Look, babe, I’m not exactly a fan, either, but I can’t kick his ass and you can’t shoot him, so we’re kinda stuck right now.” I was getting a little frustrated, and Lucky had all the beer, so I headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Myra sounded frightened as I reached for the handle. “You’re not going after him, are you?”

“Nah, I know better. I’m gonna go get some ice and a soda from the vending machine. Anybody else want anything?”

“I’ll go with.” Emily hopped up and stood beside me. We got out into the hallway and she looked up at me. “Now tell me straight, what do you think Luke, er, Lucky is doing with Sidney?”

Crap. She had it bad. “I really don’t think he’s going to hurt him. If he’s supposed to make a Choice I don’t think Lucky can hurt him, or everything goes all screwy. I mean, he’s capable, but I don’t think he’s allowed. And there are some rules that even Lucky won’t break. Don’t sweat it, honey, Junior’s gonna be fine.”

“If you say so.” But she still sounded a little dubious.

“Don’t sweat it. You don’t get to be this old without being a decent judge of character.” I tried to sound cavalier, but I don’t know if I pulled it off.

“You got to be that old because you’re immortal, not because you’re a good judge of character.” She pointed out. Smartass kids.

“Yeah, if I was, I probably wouldn’t have ended up hanging with all those Mongolians back when Genghis Khan was running roughshod over most of Asia. I just thought he wanted to ride around and party. Who was I to know he wanted world domination? My Mongolian was never that good anyway.” That at least got a giggle out of her, and we took our ice bucket and armful of soda cans back to the room. We were there for another hour or so before there was a knock on the door and Sid came in, looking awfully pale beneath his tattoos.

Emily leapt to her feet and rushed over to the kid, ushering him to a seat on the bed. I got up and out of the way, as did her mom. Cain tossed him a soda while Eve looked down the hall to see if she could catch any glimpse on Lucky’s location. I kept an eye on her, hoping she wasn’t going to try and put another slug into the fallen angel. Eve’s never been known for restraint, and sometimes it seems like her motto is “if at first you don’t succeed, shoot it again.” I didn’t need the attention, or the redecorating bill on my credit card. You’d be amazed how hard it is to keep a good credit rating when you don’t officially exist.

“What happened? Are you okay?” Emily asked.

“I’m fine. We just talked. Well, he talked. I listened.” Sid replied.

“What did he have to say?” I asked. “Remember, junior, deception is kinda his whole gig.”

“He talked about a lot of things. A lot about my Choice, and what was going to happen depending on what I Choose.”

“Did he happen to mention where you’re supposed to make this Choice, because we’re kinda flying blind right now.” Cain asked from the chair.

“Washington.” Michael pushed his way past Eve and into the room. “The Choice shall be made in Washington, DC. I will be leaving immediately.” The angel looked pissed, so I didn’t even bother with my standard snarky comments.
I just nodded to Myra, grabbed my room key from Junior and we headed to our room to pack. Emily and Eve started tossing things into a bag, and I glanced over at Cain, who was still sitting in the chair watching all the action.