Revelation (2 page)

They all did. Long ago, when they’d been created, they’d needed no better disguise. Getting recognized as heaven’s messenger was totally okay, back when forty-day floods and burning bushes were the rage. These days, faith was a war, with every street corner the battlefield. Nothing like making yourself a target.

Dash rolled his massive shoulders, adjusting his balance. “Satisfied? What’s going on, dude? And what’s that stink?” He stared, and sucked in a breath. “Holy shit.”

“It’s holy some damn thing. Blood in the ocean. The second sign. You know anything about this?”

“Nope.” Dash crouched and swiped a sword-callused hand through the gore, bringing up a clotted handful. He rubbed his fingers together, and grimaced. “The archangels don’t tell me anything. You know that. They just call when they want someone’s ass kicked.”

Fuck. Lune had hoped it was all under control. He’d never been too good at saving people. Get too close, they depend on you, and then
splat
! Shit happens, and you’re alone and guilty. “Mike didn’t mention anything?”

“Very funny. Mike never mentions anything. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s…y’know.” Dash wiggled his fingers in mock mystery. “The End. Could just be—”

“Ithiel’s missing, Dash.” Luniel’s voice strained tight.

Dash scratched his head, streaking blood. “Uh-huh. ‘Off on heaven’s secret business’ missing? Or, y’know. ‘Missing’ missing?”

“Hasn’t answered for a week. He always answers. You know the story, Dash. Seven vials of Himself’s wrath, hidden by seven guardian angels. Empty them out, spill the seven plagues and it’s all over. What if…” Lune hesitated. “What if Ithiel’s a Guardian? And something’s happened to him?”

Dash frowned. “Like what? Even if you’re right, which I’m not saying you are, there’s this thing kicking around called God’s Plan. You might have heard of it? If the big guy says it’s over, it’s over.”

Lune shook his dark head, stubborn. “No. Ithiel would’ve told me. Something’s not right, and it’s not just the sea going O-positive.”

Garbage lapped the shore in bloody clumps. Dash poked at a dead fish with his boot. “Say you’re right. Been a while since I read much. The sea turning to blood is the second plague? What’s number one? Something about sores and shit?”

“‘
The first angel poured out his vial upon the earth, and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon men,’
” Lune recited dramatically. A chill rippled his spine, and he longed to stretch his wings and fly away. “Shit. The Manhattan virus.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you watch CNN? They’re calling it the zombie plague. Broke out a few weeks ago in Babylon. Rots human flesh, eventually kills them. But it turns them into cunning homicidal maniacs first. It’s a real beauty.”

Dash stared, silent. And then he laughed, humorless, shaking his dark head. “Oh, man. Save my life from becoming a bad movie.”

“Dude, your life is already a bad movie. Complete with naked girls and bow-chicka-bow-wow.”

“Watch it and weep,” said Dash cheerfully. “A few more naked girls in
your
life might pull that stick from up your ass. When’s the last time you got some action?”

“Bite me.”

“That long, huh? It’s not like you’re no one’s type, Lune. Chicks dig that bad-boy look.”

Oh, yeah. Chicks dug it, all right. Chicks digging it wasn’t the problem. The problem was getting them to undig it afterwards. Lune had learned his lesson a long time ago: don’t get attached. It only ever ends in disaster.

But still, his body flushed hot and hard thinking about a woman’s sweet curves. A human woman, by choice. Now he was Tainted, he didn’t have to worry too much about the little sins, and Dash was right about one thing: it’d been one fuck of a long time. Female angels were beautiful, but something about human women
aroused Lune most deliciously. He’d always liked their fleshy scents, their skin’s hot salty flavor, the slick honey of their sex…

He snorted, avoiding the issue. “The last time? Wait, let me see. Oh, yeah. That was right before the fucking Apocalypse started and no one told me.”

“Worst damn excuse I ever heard.” Dash sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Okay. This could be just coincidence. I’ll call Mike, see if I can get the latest. But only because I like you, Lune. You know that asshole makes me want to punch him.”

“So punch him. What’s he gonna do, shun you again?”

Dash guffawed. “Oh, stop it, you saucy hussy. Don’t tempt me. You wanna come?”

Lune gulped. Ever since he’d fallen foul of Michael’s wrath—it didn’t matter how you felt about a woman, lust was still a sin for an angel of heaven—the saccharine scent of archangel made him sweat. And Michael himself was…hard to take.

“Ah. No. I’m gonna look for Ithiel. Why don’t you take Japheth?” he suggested. Japheth was another of the Tainted, a mighty warrior shunned for the sin of pride. “He was Mike’s favorite once.”

“And I still wonder about that boy’s taste in men. I’ll give him a call. Maybe he can flirt Mike into fessing up.” Dash thumped Lune on the shoulder, affectionate. “Don’t worry, kid. You’ll find your brother shacked up with a lady, or on some secret messenger-of-oh-by-the-way-you’re-screwed mission. All this Apocalypse shit will be piss and wind. Just you watch.”

“Just you watch,” echoed Lune faintly as Dash disappeared.

He sighed. He should get on and look for Ithiel. He knew his brother’s scent like he knew his own. He’d cruise the city, make a few calls. Shouldn’t be too hard.

But his gaze kept drawing back to the ocean of blood.

Thing was, when the world ended, humans had somewhere to go, be it heaven or hell. They lived forever. But unless they earned redemption—or, more likely, heaven lost patience and finally cast them into damnation—Tainted angels were soulless. When it all wrapped up, they’d be…nothing. Emptiness. Oblivion.

Luniel glanced down at the rising blood tide, and the salty meat stink crawled into his guts and coiled there, uneasy.

All piss and wind.

For all their sakes, it’d better be.

In the dim green-lit laboratory, Dr. Morgan Sterling sighed, defeated, and dropped her long glass eyedropper into its metal dish. Her digital microscope’s screen glared smugly at her, and she switched the display off and twisted back her sweaty hair.

Another no-result. The virus-infected cells on her slide just squirmed and evaded the serum until it imploded and died. She’d been trying for two weeks to work up some kind of antibody reaction, but none of her solutions sustained the smallest effect for more than a second or two.

Damn it.

Morgan slid off her stool and peeled off her plastic gloves, dropping them in the trash. “Lights,” she ordered, and the white fluorescents flickered on, illuminating her laboratory’s stainless steel benches, glass-fronted refrigerators and banks of digital tissue analysis equipment. All this technology, and this damn Manhattan virus still eluded her.

She unbuttoned her white coat and laid it over a chair, fluffing out her long dark curls. To be fair to herself, this was the Babylon chief medical examiner’s office, not a disease control lab, and she was no expert virologist but just a junior pathologist who did autopsies for a living. City hall had called in the WHO and the infectious diseases crew from the CDC in Atlanta, and
from the daily e-mail updates, no one was making any more headway than she.

But Morgan knew enough about virology to be disappointed she couldn’t do more. She’d probably get fired for using CME resources for this, even though she was doing it on her own time. Which was why she was in the office at nine on a Thursday night, instead of at home or dating her non-existent boyfriend. Morgan wasn’t big on boyfriends. Sure, she liked men, and they generally found her attractive, at least to start with. She just didn’t have time for relationships when lives were at stake.

And lives were always at stake.

Beyond an internal window covered with half-open venetians, the office TV blared in shimmering 3D, a newscast featuring some religious nutter raving on about God’s will and the end of the world.

Morgan snorted. Yeah, right. If there really was a God, It didn’t give a shit one way or the other. She’d seen religion ruin enough lives to figure that out. It was the main reason she’d become a doctor—science meant explanations, answers, truth. Religion offered only lies and maybes.

And you sure saw a lot of those on TV these days. Twenty years of a hard-line right-wing White House had spread the war on terror to a third of the globe. The United States had made a lot of enemies, foreign and domestic, and citizens under constant threat of homegrown terror turned to God and extremism to justify their paranoia. The global economy was just one more theatre in the conflict. Wall Street soared on the back of clandestine arms deals and aggressive corporate shock tactics, and the rich got richer, while uptown, urban decay ruled, and warring gangs killed each other on the streets in the name of God. The fanatical incumbents in city hall whipped up the tension with discrimination and overzealous police presence. Some called it a new age of prosperity and righteousness—the new Babylon. Others called it asking for trouble.

Morgan pushed through plastic double doors into the deserted office. The religious nutter on the TV wasn’t screaming or waving his hands, she saw. He was well groomed and handsome, with short dark hair, a neat suit and calm Latino eyes. He spoke intelligently, articulately, without hyperbole.

Didn’t mean he wasn’t a frickin’ nutter.

They shouldn’t try to cure the Manhattan virus, he said, because the disease represented God’s will. It was His way of exposing sinners. The Bible said only those carrying the Beast’s mark would be affected. Everyone else was safe. All we need do is pray for
deliverance, amen
!

Morgan watched for a few moments, her lip curling. God’s will was a city in fear? Twelve hundred fatalities in a week, the National Guard barricading the streets and a temporary morgue in Central Park overflowing with corpses?

Preachers, churchmen, evangelists. No matter what religion, they were all the same. All liars. This guy on the TV was more dangerous, because he seemed normal. People would believe him. And when he turned on them, they’d stare and sob and say,
“What the hell happened? He seemed so nice and genuine.
”

Her throat tightened, angry, and she gripped the asthma inhaler in her pocket and forced herself to breathe. “TV off,” she snapped, and the screen flicked silent.

The cultist who’d seduced her mother had seemed nice and genuine, too. Right up until sixteen-year-old Morgan had hopped off the Lexington Avenue subway after Spanish class at Hillary Clinton High to find her mother on the living room floor, her Bible in her hand and a shotgun beside her. Blood everywhere. Bits of her brain dripping down the walls.

The cops had found the e-mails inciting suicide on her mother’s tablet, but the cult leader who sent them had long skipped town. Similar suicides were discovered throughout the city. All part of the bastard’s plan.

All her family’s money had gone to the cult. All their possessions. Morgan had to pay her way through college and med school on full scholarships and part-time jobs. But she’d made it, without any help. Whenever she faltered, her mother’s messy death sustained her. Depending on others was deadly. Blind trust was a killer.

But Morgan Sterling, MD, junior assistant medical examiner for Babylon County, controlled her own destiny now. And she wouldn’t pray for deliverance from anyone.

The door banged open, and Suhail, the lab assistant, pushed in a trolley loaded with tissue samples in yellow plastic
iceboxes, the black biohazard symbol printed on the side. “Another load for you, Dr. M.,” he said cheerfully, a grin on his young face.

Suhail was studying at med school, and worked at the morgue part-time, when he wasn’t smoking dope and raising hell with his numerous lurid gang boyfriends. He had messy dye-blond hair and a tongue stud, and wore a t-shirt with a cartoon of a phallic-looking rocket launcher and the words
STICK THIS UP YOUR JIHAD.

He also sported a cut lip and the remains of a juicy black eye. Morgan guessed that in gang-happy Babylon, full of militant Latinos and Aryan white supremacists, a mouthy gay Arab anarchist got beaten up by pretty much everyone. But like Morgan, Suhail doggedly made the best of what he had, even if it wasn’t much.

“Thanks, So-so,” Morgan said. “In the last fridge. I’m almost full up.” Manhattan virus was virulent and so far 100 percent lethal, but not particularly infectious. It could be transmitted by blood and fluid contact, like biting or access to an open wound. Only level-two precautions were required for samples in the lab, the same as hepatitis C or HIV. But in the wild, it was another story. When it came to spreading the infection, Manhattan’s victims were cunning—and determined.

“Sure thing. A few more homicide DOAs down in the morgue, too.” Suhail leaned his skinny brown elbow on his cart like the top-class time-waster he was, and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “So how’s it going? You finding anything on the hush-hush?”

“Nope.” Morgan bit her lip. Medicine couldn’t solve every problem. But neither did it promise all the answers. She’d helped the CDC track down the virus’s likely zero point, which was a start. But it was far from a cure.

“The boss, has he figured you out yet?”

His delight made her smile. Suhail liked breaking the rules, and he’d covered for her enough times, hoarding samples and fiddling paperwork and making excuses to the boss. She snorted. “J.C.? Like he’d stick his head out of his office for me.”

“This is not what I hear.” Suhail scratched his tight-jeaned ass loftily.

“Well, you heard wrong.”

He winced. “Oh. Sorry. Bad date?”

“Something like that.” Morgan sighed. “I’d better go prepare those autopsies, just in case. Give me a reason to be here so late.”

“Yeah. Clear out a few fridges, why doncha? We’re still swamped, even with the deadhouse tent in the Park.” He chuckled. “Babylon County, Stiffs ‘R’ Us.”

She stifled a laugh. The irony of a crazy gangboy like Suhail working in the county morgue didn’t escape her. Half the corpses she examined were gang-related deaths. Still, you had to keep your sense of humor, and at least Suhail didn’t spout religious platitudes while he was raising hell. “Sorry, tell me again why you’re studying to be a doctor?”