Necessary Evil and the Greater Good - A novel

Necessary Evil and the Greater Good - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Make your own destiny...or steal a Prophecy

Leviticus sat at his desk and stared at the monitor. He was just one of thousands, maybe even millions of Angels sitting in cubicles at that very moment, working away at the day's tasks. Most of his coworkers actually seemed to like their jobs. Most of them hadn't been at it nearly as long as he had, but even the few that had still seemed to believe in what they were doing. Leviticus wasn't sure when he had stopped believing, but he knew it had been a long, long time ago. He no longer went out with the other Angels after work to drink and talk about the good work they had done, the little coups they had scored in the name of righteousness. He faked it just enough to stay below suspicion and did his job just well enough to keep it. After all, it could always get worse – even Heaven needed janitors.

Today he wasn't even pretending to work; he just couldn't bring himself to care. Bits and pieces of Mestoph's plan kept swirling around in his head, making it hard to concentrate. All he could think about were Omens and Prophecies. Mestoph had been right: he was tired, sick and tired. Worse still, he was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Leviticus had once been a major player on the world stage, hobnobbing with Jesus and his apostles, doing the work of the Lord and feeling good about it. But the glory days of plotting and scheming on Earth in the name of the Lord were long behind him. After Judas, things just hadn't been the same. With their orchestration of that great betrayal, Freewill Industries had shown that they could play the same games too. And if they so chose they could play them better.

Once upon a time, Leviticus had been Jesus's forward reconnaissance during his Spreading the Word of the Lord tour, checking out cities and towns to see how desperate they were for a miracle, how gullible they might be and how they would react if something completely unexplainable happened. The last thing they needed was to find a receptive town only to have them freak out when Jesus did one of his patented parlor tricks and string him up. Not that it hadn't ever happened. They'd had to sneak out of Bethphage like thieves in the night because they had been accused of being thieves in the day for stealing a donkey. It seemed that claiming the Lord needed it was not an acceptable form of currency in Bethphage. They did, of course, steal the donkey on their way out.

Jesus was arrested in Ephraim for being a warlock after he made a dead chicken dance—in hindsight they probably shouldn't have used a cooked one that people had already eaten from—and Leviticus and Judas had to break him out of jail before they stoned him the next morning. The townspeople would have stoned him that night, but they were too busy vomiting reanimated pieces of chicken.

They all had to sneak out of Caesarea Philippi after a string of suicides were attributed to Jesus. He had given a sermon while floating off the edge of a nearby cliff, stating it was his faith in God that kept him aloft. He had meant it to be metaphorical, but when a dozen bodies were found at the bottom of the cliff the next day, it wasn't hard to find someone to blame.

After they had been run out of enough places, they had realized they had to keep that sort of thing to a minimum or the rumors of his failures would outpace the rumors of his miracles. There were only so many small, backwater towns back in that day that you could wipe out before people started getting a bit suspicious. That was before CNN and the internet, when there were such things as secrets and privacy.

Judas' betrayal was a complete surprise to everyone in Heaven, Inc, and a bigger surprise to Jesus himself. They had been close friends, and he took it very personally. The two of them hadn't spoken since; when he got back to Heaven, he made sure Judas never worked in the upper echelon again. That's not to say that Heaven, Inc. didn't spin it all the best way possible. It had helped jump-start a whole new religion, which to be honest was what Jesus and his apostles had been trying rather futilely to do the whole time. However, let's not confuse getting most of what Heaven, Inc. wanted with having the plan backfire on Freewill International. They had proved without a doubt that despite the fact that they didn't have divine or otherworldly powers, they could play on our level—and they could play well. It was a big coming out party for them and it set them up for life.