Escaping Heaven (42 page)

             
There was a roll of thunder outside of the apartment, and Jake scooped up the sword hilt quickly, more out of reflex than anything, and rushed to the window. The sky was filled with Heavenly light, a hundred doors open in a ring around the apartment building, and Jake looked up at the sky with wide eyes, his left hand raised to shield his eyes from the overwhelming flood of luminescence.

The doors didn’t close, as they were supposed to after several seconds, as the angels had left blockers in them. The doors were designed not to close while anything was passing through, and so if something was halfway through, they stayed open until they were clear. The upshot of this was that the light from all the doors was continuously pouring onto the ground below, almost blinding Jake, who was franticly glancing from door to door to door, as Taggers poured out of them.

             
Without warning, three Taggers plowed into the back of him, knocking his intangible form through the wall and out into the parking lot outside of the apartment complex. The angels didn’t let go, tumbling with him, clinging to his body and his arms, knocking the sword from his hands with a forcible wrenching of his arm.

             
As the four celestial forms fell three stories from Kelly’s apartment, even more Taggers descended from the sky, dogpiling upon the mass of bodies, Max flying down to kick the sword hilt away. All of the Taggers were watching as Max and his team closed in around Jake as he struggled and twisted, trying to wrench free of the two burly angels who were trapping him by his arms. Jake felt like if he turned or twisted any more, he might pull his arms out of his sockets, but maybe that would be better than this. He continued to struggle as Max walked up to him.

             
“This is for making me have to come after you a second time, Jake,” Max said as he balled his hand up into a fist and punched Jake in the face.

             
Jake groaned as he took the punch then turned to look back and Max, who punched him in the face again. “This is for cutting Maria with a sword.” Again. “And Nhalha.” Again. “Polydorous.”

             
Around that point, the angels stopped waiting for Max, and a dozen or so of them circled around him and just starting punching and kicking him. Jake fell to the ground, screaming in pain and agony, trying to shield himself from the relentless assault of blows the angels were raining down upon him.

             
For once in his life, Jake Ragar was truly miserable, and for the life of him, he didn’t know why the angels were so mad at him.

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F
rom the field across from the apartment’s parking lot, hidden under the shade of a tree and beneath a tarp designed to camouflage their position, Jake Altford winced as he watched the man they had set up to take the fall for him come plummeting out of the window and onto the black top of the parking area.

             
The angels had surrounded the apartment complex with a small force before they opened all the doors in a shock and awe tactic designed to draw him to the window, which it had done. Once they knew exactly where he was, they struck from behind with speed and ferocity so he wouldn’t have a chance to get away.

             
Jake flinched as he saw Max punch him the first time, muttering beneath his breath. “Quit showboating, Tagger,” he whispered to himself. “Just do it already.” Max punched him again and again and eventually the angels crowded around and started pummeling the guy they had gotten to take the fall for him, and Jake couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. “Why can’t you just use the sword? Send him back.” The man collapsed into a pile on the ground, and they were still thundering blows down upon him, taking bits and pieces out of his celestial form, but not doing enough damage to send him back yet, simply inflicting as much pain as they could. Jake clenched his hand into a fist and tensed up.

             
Bob, who was beneath the tarp with Jake and James, grabbed Jake’s shoulder, holding him still. “Forget it, Jake,” he whispered quietly. “It’s Heaven.”

             
The angels took their sweet time, beating Jake Ragar for almost ten minutes before one of the angels descended from the sky, a man of some importance it seemed. Wings unfurled from his back, white and majestic, although they seemed to be more for show than anything, as Jake knew the angels could fly without them.

The Erelim, Diogenes, closed his wings in behind him, walked over towards the mound of angels and then whistled sharply. The angels backed away although two of them remained, each holding a gnarled mass that had once been one of Jake Ragar’s arms.

             
Diogenes looked at the man, who was bleeding Heavenly smoke, no actual blood shed, but it made him look like his body was on fire from the inside. The Captain shook his head. “I wish it hadn’t come to this, but examples have to be made, and I can’t have other people getting ideas in their heads,” he said, matter-of-factly. “We’ll see you in Heaven, Jake, and you can stay there.” His hand brought his sword hilt out, his thumb moving onto the gem with one fluid motion as his arms whipped around, the blade springing to life midswing. The flaming weapon came down in the center of Jake Ragar’s head and cleaved him in half, as the body collapsed into white dust and began to swirl into a void before popping as it disappeared. Diogenes looked at Max intently. “You and your team are going to be there when he gets to the reformation chamber, and you’re going to make sure he’s so doped up, he can’t even so much as spell escape, much less plan and execute one.”

             
Max nodded, offering a salute. “Yes sir.”

             
Diogenese looked up at the angels, shouting out in a massive voice. “Okay! Everyone back to Heaven! Show’s over!”

             
One member of each team began cutting doorways in space, and as quickly as they had arrived, all 77 groups of 7 angels, plus the five Erelim that had come with them, returned back to Heaven. The doors closed behind them one after another, until the entire area was dark once more, with the only light in the area coming from the streetlights in the parking lot, and some various lights on the side of the apartment building.

             
The group beneath the tarp remained still for a good fifteen minutes or so after the angels were gone before they pulled the tarp back and rose to their feet, walking out to the parking lot.

             
Jake was dressed in civilian clothes, as were Bob and James. With the exception of their slightly glowing auras, they looked like three normal people. Bob had taken a collection of clothes in their sizes from the lockup in Heaven and brought them down. It was nice not to be in togas and tunics, Jake thought, and these clothes had the distinct advantage of turning tangible when they did.

             
Bob and James kept in step with Jake, who walked to the area of the parking lot where the angels had beaten the other Jake for what seemed like ages. “And you’re sure the guy was scum, Bob?”

             
Bob nodded, raising his hands. “I can assure you, Jake. It was the worst guy I could find with the same first name as you on such short notice, but he was horrific. He thought he was entitled to everything in the world, so he beat anyone who disagreed with him, he harassed every woman he could find, even raped one…” Bob said with a shiver. “You ask me, he deserved it.”

             
Jake sighed softly, crouching down at the area where the other Jake’s form had lain as the angels had kicked it, running his fingertips over the blacktop, unable to take his eyes off of that spot. “I hope so, because they beat that man to death a dozen times over and didn’t let him die.”

             
James placed his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “A rapist deserves even worse.”

             
Jake nodded. “You’re right.”

             
Thirteen hours earlier, Bob had picked up Jake Ragar, a horrific man who just happened to die at a convenient time and share a first name with Jake Altford. Bob had given the man Jake’s toga and tunic, as well as his halo and sword. While halos could not be taken from a person after they’d been placed on someone’s head, they could be given freely, so Jake had given the halo to Bob, and Bob had given it to the other Jake. Then Bob and James had brought Jake Ragar to Kelly’s empty apartment, and told him to wait.

             
Bob had to run some other errands, the Cherub had told the new Jake, and angels would come and get him soon to take him up to Heaven. The loathsome man seemed more bothered by the fact that he had to wait, seeing nothing wrong with his actions over the years. They insisted that he had to wait, otherwise there would be problems, and the man reluctantly accepted this. They had chosen Kelly’s empty apartment to help sell the story just a little bit more. It would give the Taggers the kind of thing they were expecting to see.

             
The Cherubim had then taken a bit of cloth from Jake Ragar’s old clothing and given it to Lenny, who had taken it to the Taggers. The Taggers had plugged the scrap into a compass, and eight hours later, they had Jake’s location, simply the wrong Jake, not that they would ever know that.

             
Jake had hoped they would consider him so dangerous that they would send him to Heaven and then drug him up so massively, there would never be a chance for Ragar to tell anyone there had been a mistake, because the Taggers considered him too much of a liability in any other state. And he’d been right. The only part Jake hadn’t foreseen was the vicious beating, and he didn’t like how the aftertaste of the violence lingered on him, no matter how much the man had deserved it. The Taggers had been as cruel as they could, lashing out at Ragar with a ferocity that even disturbed James, who had seen more than his share of brutality over the millennia.

             
“What now, boss?” Bob asked Jake.

             
Jake lifted his fingers from the pavement and moved slowly to his feet, turning to look at them. “Let’s go meet up with Shelly and Randall. I want to discuss a few things, and frankly, as much as that sight made me sick to my stomach, I need to eat something.”

             
James offered a weak smile. “Then let us go and partake.”

             
Jake nodded. “Bob?”

             
The Cherubim lifted part of his shirt and pulled the sword hilt loose. Bob had stolen enough swords so that each of them carried one now, including Bob himself. They had been teaching Bob how to make doors and transport people, and the round little man was a quick learner. They had him do it to get his practice in.

             
James and Bob stepped through the door and Jake moved to the door, pausing to look back for just a second. “Damn you, Heaven, for what you’ve made us into,” he sighed, then turned and walked through the door.

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U
p in Heaven, Max and his team waited in the reformation area for Jake’s body to reform. There was a twenty-minute period between the time a body was completely reformed and when the person woke up, and Max intended to make sure they used it well.

             
The reformation area looked like a combination of a cell and a bubble, a semi-transparent dome with gold bars inlaid in it to make it even more durable. Surrounding the bubble was the main Tagger barracks, and many of the Taggers had turned out to watch Jake’s body reform in Heaven. This one man who had given them so much trouble, they all wanted to get a look at him before he was gone for good.

             
Smoke swirled and floated inward, tightening in and in until it was distinguishable as the form of a person. Ten minutes later, Jake Ragar’s body lay in the middle of the reformation area. Max and Polydorous lifted the body up and laid it down on a gurney, wheeling it out of the bubble as Yael held the door open for them.

             
The body had been strapped to the gurney, and it was surrounded by the seven angel team as they moved it down the corridors, two of the angels holding onto an arm each, another two holding onto a leg each.

             
“Amazing how much trouble one man can be, isn’t it?” Yael asked as they nodded to two Taggers who were guarding a very sturdy set of doors. The two guards stopped the group, and two more guards moved out of concealed spaces in the wings to examine the group, and the body they were moving.

             
“Let’s not take all day, guys,” Max told them. “We need to get him in there before he wakes up.”

             
“I understand that, sir,” the lead guard said, “but you’ll appreciate that to let you do your job, you have to let me do mine.” The guards checked underneath the gurney and checked each member of the team carefully. “All right,” he said, “two of you can escort the body in with two of my men. The rest of you can wait here.”