Mission Log, Day 14, Thursday, September 16th, 1999 (continued)
I must quickly update this record, for I have made headway in bringing my latest target to justice, and justice does not like to wait.
Someone upstairs must have heard my whining yesterday, for whom should I see in the stacks of Norlin Library this morning but my little justice-fleer. I was shelving books for Giles at the time, but this was certainly far more important so I made an effort to learn a little more about my target.
He stood in the aisle with a young woman, flirting and laughing, the usual human courtship stuff. I peered through the spaces between shelves at his back, saw a card hanging from his backpack which had his picture on it and read "Jackson White." The talk turned to an invitation to a party at his house tonight, which she readily accepted. Perhaps it was the trusting innocence in her eyes, or my already growing dislike for the boy, but my gut told me a betrayal was in the works. I had to know for sure; when they parted ways, I engineered a collision, offered all the usual apologies while I hunted for just the right moment to stare into his eyes. They were flat, practiced. I felt his cruelty, but not to what degree. He said the usual things too, but didn't help pick up my books, just continued on his way. I followed until he reached class, then looked up his name and obtained an address. Smiling, I returned to shelving books and plotted my next move.
A phone call from Rook interrupted my day with a request to help solve the puzzle of the Tapestry. I could have said no, but the carts of books waiting to be shelved convinced me otherwise.
Bless Jael, she's been quite attentive to me lately. I'm sure it's a side effect of her attunement, but she asked how my Raven vessel was doing (still mangy as an old bear skin) and sung a quiet Song of Healing for it. Matt too.
Lotsa talk about the Tapestry. I don't remember what sparked the thought, but I somehow came to the conclusion that the Tapestry could be a prison, protective to the point of restrictive, and the Angel of Weaving one of its captives, trapped by Eli and guarded for years by the Sword. We ran around Heaven for a while then, more on a personal journey for Arashiel than business, talking to her fellow kirin about Stuff. I did meet an Ofanite of Jordi, but I forgot how brusque they can be. This one didn't feeling like talking much.
Anyway, eventually we decided we'd talked enough. We went to some remote mountains in America and unraveled a bird from the edge of the Tapestry to see what might happen. What happened was a giant Roc. GIANT. It seemed quite irritable, and in desperation I begged it to calm down with my Raven tongue. Miraculously, it listened! The translation was a little rough, but it was very glad to be out of "the dark place" and, contrary to my companions suggestions, did NOT want to be sent to the Marches. It asked about the War, which I assumed meant the Purity Crusades, now long over. Before it left, I asked if it could answer some of our questions. For example, it explained that it volunteered to be woven into the Tapestry by Kariel to escape the Scourge of Angelkind, although it was hesitant about doing so and requested to be on the edge so it could be released first. After much arguing about the dangers of staying on Earth (humans and their contraptions topping that list), it headed deeper into the wilderness while we returned to Jordi's Savannah.
Of course, the ramifications of reintroducing extinct species engendered much debate. I actually leaned toward not releasing the creatures, as much as that grated on my soul. What good is it to release them if they have no world which accepts them? Talk continued all the way back to the Norlin Tether. Human again, I began to make my case.
Our attentions returned to the here and now with the crash of breaking glass, and Jael running out the door, face twisted in desperation. Stunned silence followed for a fraction of a second, until Arashiel shouted "Bob!" and raced after her.
We found his vessel's body in his apartment, dead from a gunshot to the center of the forehead. Jael seemed shattered, catatonic, incoherent as Rook tried to rationalize with her. Someone made an effort to call the authorities, but I stopped them just in time. Wouldn't want to ruin Bob's hard-won role over a little thing like a bullet. I saw nothing in the celestial realm, so we went Up and found it/him huddled near a heart in Eli's room. At least he was okay, just needed some heart time to work out his Trauma.
We returned with a Seraph who shed more light on the murder. A man in his thirties, dark hair and eyes, in blue denim. He knocked on the door, Bob opened it, one shot, then gone. Bob must have known the man; he seemed far too paranoid to open the door to strangers, especially knowing a Triad was after him. I suspected it was an old demon friend of his, someone he'd been friendly with before. Still, it seemed awfully strange. Jael gave me the keys to go get Matt from campus; his discussions with the local flora suggested the man drove a brown car. I took him right back while Rook and Jael tidied up the apartment (they'd have to dispose of the body later). When I came back, I saw Jael crying, leaning on Rook's shoulder. Don't want to know, don't want to see. They gave me a ride back to campus, and I spent the walk up to the Hill fighting with conflicted thoughts about criminals and extinct species and angelic relationships.
The sight of that sleek red car made all things clear again. It was parked in the alley behind the address I'd found in the phone book. The house was a huge one, practically a mansion, with rooms shared among several young men. Some sat on the back porch, looking my way. I found a hiding place and switched to Raven to watch without being noticed.
The melodic flow of the Symphony faltered at the sound of a celestially wounded human at the Painted Pot. By the time I arrived the business was finished, with Rook sitting on a human and Jael bleeding from a gunshot wound. The man, I soon learned, was not only a Soldier of God in service to Marc, but Bob's murderer. In light of that information, I was surprised Jael wasn't tearing him to pieces. She certainly looked as though she wanted to.
Turns out Bob once killed his angelic partner, back in his demonic days, and recently got a tip from a tall nondescript man on Bob's current whereabouts, whereupon he came to have his revenge. The strange thing about all this is that they found him in the shed behind the store, rummaging around. Bob was doing some work there earlier on an artifact to protect the Tapestry, but the strangest thing is that the man can no longer remember what he so desperately sought after. Shades of Suzanna and that woman Victoria Strassen at the wedding reception, if you ask me.
It was actually Jael who suggested taking the human to the Tether to face Dinhabah's judgment. With Adrienne there, that counted me out, but I wanted to be somewhere else anyway. I asked Jael if she was all right. Tightlipped, she nodded. The pain she fought was clearly emotional and not physical. "Be strong," was all I could think to say. Then I headed back to the mansion to see what Jackson White was up to.
Previous . . Home . . Vox Secunda . . Next