Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

The garish card in her hand felt cheap, thin and yet unexpectedly heavy, weighed down by meaning. An older man’s handwriting she recognised scrawled across the inside: “Happy Birthday Cass, I’m going to be in town next week.” That was it, save for her father’s signature at the bottom. Simple, succinct. Inviting, or demanding, a response – a ball firmly placed into her court.

It had arrived a day earlier, which was still three months after her actual birthday. It was the first of its kind in ten years, if not more and was no doubt more an announcement of his arrival, if not his inevitable appearance, rather than any genuine well-wishing of merriment. When it had arrived, his handwriting on the envelope, the use of her full name which no one ever used on the front she had known what it would be. In some ways, she had been waiting for a card like this since she’d walked out of home at the age of eighteen and never looked back. Skipped merrily through a self-sustained life beer-in-hand with Rick.

She had thrown it in the drawer and opened it that morning, after a sustained discussion about the lost city of wtf. She didn’t know why she opened it, didn’t know whether the ghosts that came out of it would be worth the time. Was it the little girl’s hope or the full-grown woman’s fury that propelled her? Did it matter?

Something had stopped her from tearing it up there and then, something had made her simply sit with it. Though the concept of what it was that stopped her felt entirely alien – as if her actions were controlled by another. It was a part of her that had managed to survive burial under the layers of anger she’d wrapped around herself. It felt weak.

Rather than destroy it she simply slammed it back into the drawer where it belonged, far out of sight and instead set her mind on the task ahead. During their impromptu morning meeting, it was determined that while Rick and Andrew played tomb raider, Louise and Ben would continue to prick and poke a medical explanation for his resurrection and she and Angel were left to have ‘discussions’ with their ‘guest’.

She knew the pairing was not a coincidence, despite Rick’s insistence that she would be useless at sea – in more ways than one. She knew that it was more than that – that her temper had not gone unnoticed and that pairing her with Angel was their equivalent of a good cop-bad cop routine. Only the thought that she was somehow an out of control loose cannon served to piss her off a good deal more.

At the time Rick and Andrew’s helicopter swung low across the sparkling ocean water under the Spanish sun, Sandy stood in their collective living room looking out at the rivers and streams of rain on the French Windows. She was feeling melancholy that evening. Maybe it was the grey sky and the cool rain, maybe it was that familiar sense of being on the edge of a cliff wearing a blindfold. Something was coming, something was happening. But who? And what? She didn’t know so she could do nothing. Inaction was her greatest enemy. That and carbs.

The door opened and an equally melancholy Ben wandered in, giving her a small smile in greeting. She didn’t respond. He walked up beside her, his reflection growing and shimmering in the moving glass, alive with the rain.

“You’re worried about them,” he observed simply.

“Unlike you, I have memories of how bad things can get,” Sandy snapped at him a little harshly. She’d held back her urge to hit him, at least; that was something. He remained silent for a long time and when he finally spoke his voice remained calm and quiet.

“We didn’t like each much before, did we?” he asked.

“No Ben, we really didn’t,” she replied. “Does it matter?”

“I suppose not,” he answered. “So this bad blood, is that why everyone looks at me funny?”

She hesitated, wondering if the full story would serve anything but to further alienate a man who had no idea of who he was or what his place was in this world. But he needed to know, didn’t he? Needed to know the danger posed by his very existence beyond questions of life and death – into matters of lots of lives and lots of death.

“Rick probably gave you the abbreviated version of what happened last year,” she began, “Maybe he was trying to protect you, maybe he just felt guilty, who knows. But you should deserve to know. The reason none of us are actually that shocked to see you, besides the usual, is that this isn’t the first time any of us have seen someone ‘come back from the dead’.”

“This happens regularly these days?” he asked, confused.

“Twice,” she agreed. “The first was a girl who died in a bank robbery in which Rick and I were nearly taken hostage. She was shot, right through the chest. I watched her die. Next time we saw her, she was working for the bad guy, tried to kill us all. She held a knife to Louise’s throat, tried to kill a bank teller. Generally wasn’t a very nice person.”

“Down in the temple, our friend Janet died in a cave-in when we all given the powers you’ve seen demonstrated. Flash-forward a month or so and it turns out she’s the First Horseman of the Apocalypse attempting to crash all the servers on Earth and conquer humankind. Again, not a very nice person, lots of people died. Do you see the pattern emerging here? Generally, someone comes back from the dead, lots of people die.”

“And you think that’s going to happen again with me?” he asked. She shook her head,

“I think with you, it’s going to be worse,” she explained, “Because Rick’s going to find it hard to kill you. I, however, won’t find it especially difficult.”

“I don’t know myself,” Ben replied, “But I don’t think I’m evil.”

“We’ll see.”

She turned her back to him to face into the rain outside, her thoughts turning back to Rick. It had taken a mere split-second for Rick to choose to shoot Janet, a moment, a reaction. Because he knew what had to be done – he saved the tormenting himself until later. She had to wonder if the bond between Rick and Ben had been strong enough that he would hesitate. That it would take longer than a split second...if Ben was Rick’s Achilles heel. She hoped never to find out but suspected she would anyway.

After a moment’s hesitation, Ben turned from the window and headed off into the further realms of the house. Perhaps back to his room, she didn’t know – nor did she particularly care. After a long time, she sensed someone else enter the room.

“Was I so different than Ben once upon a time?” Angel asked, appearing as he seemed to do as if from nowhere, his pleasantly curious face reflected in the glass further dimmed back from Ben’s. “Did I not awake in this world as if from death, without the memories I still struggle to regain?”

It didn’t surprise her that Angel knew of what she and Ben had been speaking, just being around him seemed to make all things possible. Sometimes when she glanced into the deepest pools of his crystal clear eyes she began to wonder if he could sense her thoughts and her emotions. It spooked her, which was why she only afforded herself the briefest glances into his eyes. She could not afford to have him look into the abyss inside her...she feared it would drive him mad.

“It’s not the same thing, Angel,” she told him, “We know what brought you back – we witnessed it happening. It was your ability to heal that regenerated you, even after all the millennia. You didn’t simply appear in the middle of the ocean.”

“I take it you don’t believe in miracles?”

“Since the day two thousand, three hundred and fifty-four people fell out of the sky...no...I don’t believe in miracles,” she snapped back. She turned to him, glaring at him for just a second. “Now...are we going to interrogate Cyvus or what?”

“Lead the way,” he offered, in his perceptively calm manner that just infuriated her all the more. He would not allow himself to be provoked, to become angry...he was damn cold in his emotional versatility. She had seen him smile, heard him laugh, yet he was always in control of himself. She envied that.

She did indeed lead the way and headed straight for their expansive basement and the row of cells in which Cyvus occupied their first and only one of use. He was sitting on the floor in the back of his cage, glaring at the bars. He didn’t even turn his head as the two of them walked up to the door.

“Good Morning, I hope you are not too uncomfortable,” Angel greeted, his hands clasped behind his back. Bushier eyebrows, pointier ears, she could see it...

Cyvus finally pried his eyes from the bars and glared up at Angel, clearly telling him he was rather uncomfortable. Or pissed off. Or perhaps some combination of the two.

“He may care, I don’t, so let’s just get on with this,” Sandy interrupted. Cyvus turned his gaze upon her but she stood firm despite it. “We want to know everything you know about the New Order, what they’re up to now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We know there are survivors of the organization,” Angel explained, “We know that in the wake of the death of their new leader there was a power struggle and an attempt to reform into the New Order. What we don’t know is who the new leaders are and what their intentions are.”

Cyvus remained stalwart and silent, turning his attention back away from them and once more back to the bars in front of him.

“How much of the old organization still functions?” Sandy asked him, raising her voice a little. He ignored her. “Sod this.”

She flicked a switch nearby and the low hum disappeared. She kicked open the now non-functioning doors and strode into the cell. Cyvus didn’t even look up at her as she punched him hard in the face.

“Sandy!” Angel snapped, sounding distressed.

“Tell us what we need to know!” she yelled at Cyvus, ignoring Angel outside the cell. She reached down with one hand aflame and began to burn the skin on his chest with the simple laying on of a hand. He finally yelled out in pain even as the metal began to spread across his skin. It was too slow to prevent the black scorch mark that spread across his chest.

Suddenly Sandy’s hand was disconnected as Angel grabbed her with one arm, breaking her grip. He dragged her out of the cell, even as she cursed and kicked, slamming the door shut behind him and flipping the switch to turn the electricity back on.

“Let go of me,” she snapped at him as soon as they found themselves out of earshot. She shook his grip off of her arm and the two glared, neither backing down. She saw him riled for the first time and it seriously unnerved her. The solitary blemish on the face of an Angel...and all.

“I think you went far beyond the boundaries of a good cop-bad cop,” Angel told her, making a visible effort to calm himself down, “Perhaps you should not continue these interrogations, I will ask Ruth to assign someone else this task.”

“Assign shit,” she snapped. “I am sick of all this liberal, namby-pamby crap. These people are dangerous and they will not hesitate to do the same to us. If we don’t get tough and fast they will wipe us all out. I don’t want the world’s blood on my hands. Do you?”

“What you’re talking about is torture.”

“No, it’s necessary.”

She started to walk away up the steps but hesitated when he quietly asked her,

“How do you feel when you look in the mirror?” he asked, “What happens when you see in your reflection the very thing you have fought to destroy?”

“If the price I have to pay for the safety of my friends and family is the cleanliness of my soul, then I will happily pay it.”

She ascended the final few steps and was gone. Angel, however, remained deep in thought, troubled by what he heard, by what he had witnessed. If evil must be fought with yet more evil, however different in nature, there would only be rivers of blood and tears. Did good now slip into the cracks evil had missed? Was ‘God’ the invader in the universe? Or was heaven ultimately empty? A dust bowl graveyard in which the rotting corpse of the almighty lay upon a barren throne of blood and bone – the powers, principalities, thrones and dominions?

It troubled him.