A Book of Dust and Breath

Chapter Thirty One

Max parked his bike outside The Crab Shack and stretched. Despite the ridiculous schedule Harriet was keeping him to these past few weeks, he'd arrived a few minute early. The brisk autumn air carried the stink of automobile exhaust. This part of the city had sprung up faster than those in charge of planning such things had anticipated. Now, a dark cloud of smog hung over every congested intersection. Coming here generated a fierce protectiveness of his country home. At some point, this urban disaster would spread all the way to Blissfield and someone would want to buy the fields around him and build a Wal-Mart.

Well, they'd just have to wait until he died and act fast before he reached maturity and came into his memories again. His child would grow up seeing deer and beavers, pheasant and wild turkeys, not just little scavenging house sparrows living off dropped french fries.

He checked his watch--seven minutes.

Pulling open the door, a blast of too-warm air assaulted him, replacing the mechanical stink of gasoline engines with the overwhelming smell of fish and garlic.

A demon--or possibly a host of demons--glared at him through the hostess's eyes.

The door fell shut behind Max with a heavy thud.

"You need to go back where you came from," Max said, careful to keep his voice quiet.

The girl/thing laughed. "You're authority is weak at best."

Max glanced to the left and right. Yellow eyes in the kitchen. Yellow eyes behind the bar. The kid with the bus tub. The middle-aged waitress laughing with the guests seated by the window.

A hot rush of adrenaline forced a thin sheen of sweat to the surface of his skin.

"I've been sent by Heaven. The host will be at my back."

"Heaven sends you to attend to the dead. Beyond that, you're no more than a meat suit like the rest of them."

"I will reap here. You will not stand in my way."

"Be my guest," the thing hissed holding out a hand toward the man already sweating and turning red in a corner booth. "You are here for the dead. We've come for the living, and you, little half-breed, have no power over us."

"Nathan? Nathan, what's wrong?" A woman's voice rose above the usual restaurant din. Every pair of gleeful amber eyes watched the moment of suffering, feasted on it.

Max, knowing the foul monster spoke truth and hating her all the more for it, forced himself to turn his back on her and walk toward the table.

Nathan's eyes rolled up in his head. He should have skipped the shellfish.

His wife screamed for help.

The hostess thing laughed.

The restaurant staff from Hell watched the show.

Max let matter fall away from him and stood at the end of the table, waiting as the woman crawled halfway across the table, knocking both drinks over onto the floor. She fumbled with her phone, screamed at her husband. At last, Nathan frowned at her.

"What's wrong, Dolly?"

Max laid a hand on him and they stood in the void.

Azrael met them. Harriet sat back in her chair, arms crossed, scowling at the crowd of angels and reapers gathered in front of her desk.

"Great!" She drawled. "Now this one shows up with a human."

Azrael ignored her. "You are untouched?"

Max released the man's arm. "They made no move against me."

"They're building an army. It takes time for them to crawl up, to find a suitable host," a companion said from behind her dark veil.

"Not enough time," Michael answered.

Max looked down and away. Michael's holy light burned his face, stung his eyes, wrenched his heart.

Azrael stepped close to the human soul, trembling with panic, sending up little sparks of blue light into the darkness of the void. "Fear not. You are safe." Death put an arm around the man and led him away.

Michael spoke again, his resonating baritone thudding like cannons in Max's ears. "Reapers, there is war. Raboch has freed Corzor from the pit. They seek revenge against Death. They long for the overthrow of the order. This is not your fight. My armies will do what we must. The companions will safeguard the humans, but your reaps must be completed efficiently. Perfectly. There is no margin for error. No allowance for even the smallest distraction."

Max's legs threatened to buckle. He didn't need to look up to know the archangel's eyes were on him.

"Go. And may God go with you."

Max stood in the restaurant with the screaming widow who continued to shake her husband as if she could rattle his soul back into him.

One of the busboys, carrying the reek of sulfur on his skin, sauntered up to the table. "I'll help you," he said. "But first, you're going to have to help me, darlin'."

He opened his mouth and a wisp of putrid smoke rose up from his throat and began to thicken.

Max turned so the woman was behind him and spread his arms wide. From that position, he saw the companion appear in a flash of light and wrap her right hand around the smoke as though grasping the body of a snake. She wrenched the thing out of the kid's body causing him to shudder and gag. With her left hand, she reached into the folds of her robe and, coming up with a double-edged blade, sliced the monstrosity in half.

A hissing outcry rose up from around the restaurant, unnoticed by the humans in the room who were now all staring at the woman who was now screaming into the phone about needing help for her husband who was choking or having some kind of reaction or something.

The busboy, still being puppeted by God-only-knew how many demons backed away from the table.

"Go," she told Max, taking up his place between the woman and the beasts of Hell. "Reap the dead. The living are my charge."

Max took another look at the humans in the room. He counted thirteen, still in control of their will. Thirteen humans, one companion. How many demons? A hundred? A thousand?

The angel shoved at his back. "Reaper! Go!"

He forced his legs into motion and managed to have a physical form around himself again by the time he got to the parking lot. Unfortunately, physical form resulted in powerful physical reactions. By the time he got to his bike, no choice remained but to give in and allow his body to retch up into the grass.

The cool air on his sweat-damp skin sent him into a fit of shivers.

War.

At a house three miles away a cancer patient lay dying.

War.

He slung a trembling leg over the bike.

War.

Sixteen minutes until the sick woman would rise up from her body. True and whole as she hadn't been since birth.

War.

It took three tries to get the engine running.

War.

He pictured Lily as she'd been that morning, eating Saltine crackers in bed and reading "What to Expect When You're Expecting."

War.