Angel Candidate, page 2
part #3 of Lucas Johnson Series
“Good. Pick a desk in one of the offices. You will sit there from now on.”
He grabbed his laptop, clumsily got from his chair and tumbled away.
At least for now, the fear of death wouldn’t allow him to betray me. And when that stopped working, we would see how this goes. I relaxed into my chair and returned to the Sci-Fi novel.
I didn’t make it through ten pages of space marines shooting bugs before my office door opened and a man stepped in. What the hell did Matt want? Annoyed, I raised my eyes.
This wasn’t Matthew.
A priest dressed in a buttoned-up cassock with a standard priest collar entered my office. His face was clean-shaven, eyes dark blue, and hair short, semi-arranged in a I-did-this-myself type of haircut an aging rock star would wear. “I see you’re working hard,” he said with a broad smile.
How the hell did he get here? I put away the novel, glaring at him. “Who’re you?”
“I’m Father Jack.” He took the chair across the table and sat down. “And I’ve come to order an intervention from you, Lucifer.”
Chapter 2
I GLARED AT THE PRIEST, Father Jack, sitting across the table. The name Lucifer was one I never used. Yes, I have merged with the fallen angel’s soul, so I bore his name, but I hated every letter. The most troubling part was how the hell did he know.
He wasn’t at Tul Sar Naar, the prison from where I escaped, so not from there. He may have heard the name from another escapee, but that was unlikely at best. Then again, him getting to my office, which required passing two access-card-only doors, was also unlikely.
“We don’t do orders from outside of the corporation. You can try our procurement though,” I said, putting on a go-to-hell smile. “I heard they serve good coffee.”
“Casting away a priest in need?” He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seem to be appropriately caring about your soul’s salvation.”
“That ship has long since sailed for me.”
“No necessarily.” His eyes caught a glint I didn’t like. “There is always a path to redemption. Though it is rarely easy to walk on.”
Except that my contract for the Devil was for five hundred thousand years. I was forced into signing it, yes, but that mattered little in the supernatural world. On the other hand, I didn’t exactly have a lot to do. “Not in my case. But amuse me, what would you have me do?”
“That was a lot easier than I expected. You are bored, aren’t you?” He grinned. “About a week ago, the Vatican Inquisition arrested a rather powerful warlock. Yet he escaped, released by a traitor. We’ve narrowed down the traitor to five suspects from whom the we’ve formed a single squad. You will join that squad as the sixth member, discretely find the traitor, and resolve the warlock issue.”
Interesting. He didn’t want to use internal resources for this not to cause a witch hunt, which would demolish the inquisition’s morale. Not to mention the mere act of investigating the Vatican Inquisition for a traitor would incite rumors the Church didn’t want to exist. There were two glaring problems with this though. “There’s no way I can join a VI squad since I would eventually meet someone who would recognize me.”
“You won’t be using your own body.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Say that again.”
“Oh, you haven’t found out yet?” Jack formed an empathetic smile. “You are a fallen angel which, in the biological sense, makes you a spirit. That you currently inhabit the body you were born with when you were a human changes nothing of the fact that you don’t need a particular physical form to live. I’ve already prepared the body you would use for this mission.”
I stared at him blankly for a few seconds. And then I blinked a few times to recompose. “How the hell do you know all this?”
“Knowing about Heaven’s workings is a divine servant’s job.”
Implicitly, this also meant he would teach me how to switch bodies. But if that was a fallen angel ability, then my father must have had it and he already worked for the Vatican Inquisition. “Don’t you have enough fallen angels working for the VI already?”
“Why are you asking me questions to which you know the answers?”
I paused, regretting my question. I wasn’t a fallen angel in the standard sense. Normally, the word angel was used for a human who received a blessing of a real angel, the technical word was hallowed. A fallen angel was thus a man who once received the blessing and then had it taken from him. But that wasn’t my case. I have merged with the soul of the actual fallen angel, who was cast out of heaven and then killed by the Devil. The other fallen angels probably couldn’t do what I could. “How do you plan to pay me?”
“I’m not going to.” Jack relaxed into the chair. “You’re working for the Devil’s corporation, so the Church cannot pay you.”
Yeah, Lucielle, the Devil, was the sole owner of the LCorp and thus also the owner of Lucielle Legal, for which I worked. “You don’t expect me to go through this giant pile of trouble for free, do you?”
“Yes, I do.” He put on a smile that made me uncomfortable. “If you help the Church, the Church will help you. Normally, the salvation of your soul would be enough. But in your case, that would be too difficult, so there’ll be a favor instead.” His tone suddenly dropped an octave lower. “I heard you’re searching for a way to find a person by using a fragment of her soul. The Church has a man capable of such a feat.”
This priest was far too well prepared. And there was no point in me acting as if that wasn’t enough to convince me. To find Evelyn, I didn’t care what I had to do. “I accept.”
Jack rose. “Let’s go then.”
“I need to get my gear first.” I got up as well and headed toward the armory. Jack trailed me, an amused smirk on his lips. When buying the weapons, the question of transportation didn’t elude me. For that, I had multiple, near-indestructible cases to do so. I took a case as large as a big travelling bag and started stacking items inside. Sure, I was about to work undercover, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t bring some firepower. I packed my gun belt with two Colt Anacondas and over a dozen moon clips with ammo.
For the eventuality that things would get messy, I added an assortment of smoke grenades and flashbangs. And just in case, I took two hunting knives. Finally, I glanced over the fake badges I had. CIA would look strange, so I pocketed my favorite fake FBI badge. Right, I could need EMPs. I took two EMP sticks, one strong and one weak. I eyed the rocket launcher. Maybe, at some point, I would have to shoot down a helicopter or something like that.
As if he read my thoughts, Jack said, “That would be a little excessive.”
Meh, he was probably right. I would take the rocket launcher next time. I sealed the case by turning the number lock and changed my suit jacket for my leather coat. I straightened my tie, grabbed my hat, took the weapon case and walked out of the door, Jack following me.
“We will use your car,” he said.
We earned a few strange looks as we passed through the floor and into the elevator. A couple minutes later, we were in my mustang. “Where to?”
“Corpus Christi Monastery.”
I scowled. “Tell me Katherine isn’t involved.”
“I never lie.”
Great. Katherine and I were once partners and friends. And then I betrayed her, she tried to help me, I fucked up, she arrested me, but I escaped from the prison. As one of the Church’s top-ranking Paladins, Katherine approved of virtually nothing I did in the process. “That’s not going to go well.”
“I am certain Paladin O’Connor will find within her heart the will to forgive you.”
“Or she will find within her grimoire the spell to incinerate me.”
Jack laughed but said nothing. We drove through New York in silence and I parked on the pavement, right next to the monastery gate.
Corpus Christi Monastery itself stood peaceful within the sunset. Trees rustled in the soft wind. Nuns were raking in the fallen leaves and tending to the grass. Jack motioned toward the park in the courtyard and led me inside. The nuns bowed slightly and stepped out of his way as he walked.
I trailed him, getting an eerie sense that I was the only person around who didn’t know Jack’s true identity. I mean, the name was obviously fake.
We crossed the courtyard and entered the monastery. Stone hallways swallowed us, light peeking in through the stained glass. We made a turning and there stood Katherine. She leaned against the wall, her ginger hair falling freely. A deep frown marred her freckled face. She wore her usual, dark-green coat and pants, and held a bottle of Guinness. “This is a bad idea,” she said the second she saw us.
“I will be the judge of that,” Jack said calmly and motioned her to follow him.
She glowered at me for a second, and then took a sip from the beer bottle before joining us.
“Howdy,” I greeted her with a smile, but earned myself a sharp glare. Yes, our relationship needed some work.
“I know you think your plan’s smart,” Katherine said, turning her glare at Jack. “But we should be solving this internally. He’s going to screw up and cause a lot of mess that’ll be much harder to resolve.”
Thanks for believing in me, Katherine. I said nothing though.
“Have a little faith, Paladin,” Jack replied, still calm. “And perhaps also have a little less beer.”
“No.” She made a show out of drinking from the bottle.
As far as I understood Katherine’s position, she was somewhere around the top ranks of the Church’s East Coast branch. I had never seen anyone challenging her decisions, so Jack also had to be high up the Church hierarchy. Questioning him felt pointless as he would have told me who he was if he ever intended to do so.
We entered a square room. By the side lay an open coffin with ice covering its bottom and no one inside. By my estimate, that was where my body would rest when I was in another one. The problem was at the room’s other side, where stood a medical bed on which lay an unconscious man. Covered by a blanket, he had an intravenous infusion dripping into his arm, meaning he was alive. He even had full clothes, a short-sleeve shirt, jeans, shoes, and a jacket lay next to the bed. There was no one else present. I stopped, pointing at the man in the bed. “That’s not a corpse.”
“Obviously.” Jack smiled and stepped toward the man. “Meet forensic specialist and paramedic Paul Simmons. A mind-shattering spell put him into a vegetative state, from which nothing can recover him. For all practical purposes, he is dead, except that it’s not yet official, so he is still a working member of the Vatican Inquisition. You will take over his body, identity, and personality and do the mission through him.”
He was kidding, right? “How am I supposed to impersonate someone I know nothing about?”
Katherine snorted. “Looks like someone didn’t ask enough questions before agreeing to a job… again.”
Thanks, Katherine, how very observant of you.
“He served in Arizona and your mission is here in New York, so you should not meet anyone who knew him,” Jack replied in the calm tone that was starting to piss me off.
“Does he have a family?” I asked.
“A wife, a three-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son, all of whom live in Oregon and have yet to receive the news. You should not meet them either.”
I rubbed my face with my palm. The worst part was that I wanted the knowledge of how to find Evelyn too much to care. “Does he have a file or something?”
Katherine stepped the bed and drew a file from beneath the pillow. She handed it to me with a callous smirk. “You will love the details.”
I took the stack of papers and started skimming through them. “Even if I could pass for a forensic expect, he’s also a paramedic. I can’t fake that.”
“Your works starts on Monday, so you’ll receive an intense course during the weekend.” Jack spread his arms in an all-encompassing gesture. “Plus, Lucifer was once a battlefield medic in the armies of the ancient Rome. You should know the basics of treating combat wounds.”
No, I didn’t know them. I didn’t have any memories of Lucifer’s past hosts and lives. Though I had their intuition, so I could do feats that they could do semi-automatically. I skimmed to the file’s end. “There’s a part missing. I don’t see the combat proficiency section, what aether manifestations he had, what weapon training he went through, and his combat experience.”
“It’s not missing.” Katherine laughed viciously. “He’s a forensic specialist, so he had never punched a person in his life, never fired a weapon outside of mandatory pistol training, and never cast a combat spell.”
I glanced at Jack. “This must be some kind of a mistake. I’m a warmage. My entire skillset is made for combat, so there’s no way I can do an undercover mission in a personality that doesn’t know martial arts, combat magic, and weapon usage.”
Jack motioned toward the empty coffin with ice. “You will need to rise to the occasion.”
The worst thing was that even after I figured out how to do my magic in his body, I wouldn’t be able to use anything because that would break the identity. Great. With a grunt, I moved to the half-coffin and placed the weapon case on the ground. I undressed, semi-arranging my clothes onto a pile topped with my tie, coat, and hat. Atop the hat, I placed my phone and cross amulet. I lay myself down on the ice, feeling the cold bite into my back. “Okay, so how do I switch bodies?”
Jack stepped toward me. “Watch carefully as you will need to do the trip back by yourself.” He placed his palm on my chest and pulled my soul out of my body.
I felt as if I was rising, becoming weightless. The world around me looked blurrier than normal. But I felt almost no difference otherwise. Holy shit, Jack was right. I was a spirit. That was the only way to describe not feeling any difference—there was nothing to feel because getting out of the body was the same as a human getting out of the car. I raised my hand to see it as a shape of darkness.
At a casual pace, Jack crossed the room and stopped next to Paul’s bed. “Force yourself in,” he said and lowered me onto Paul’s body.
I reached into the form, seeping inside the limbs, the veins, the brain. I felt Paul’s soul floating in the deepest corners of his mind, a scattered remainder of the man he once was. I forced myself inside, merging with the body, aligning my soul with its shape.
I drew breath, now in Paul’s body, and sat upright. The body felt wrong, like wearing a bad sweater. The general idea was right, but the unusual material bit into me. Everything looked like before and across the room, I saw my original body lying in the open coffin. Damn, I had a lot of scars.
I glanced at Jack, who now seemed much larger. “You’re so not a priest, are you?”
“I am all the Lord needs me to be.” He smiled and turned toward the exit. “Paladin O’Connor will see to your preparations and the maintenance of your original body.”
I watched him leave, getting the strange feeling I knew him. Okay, I didn’t know him, but Lucifer most likely did.
Glass clanged on stone as Katherine put away the empty Guinness bottle. She gave me a vicious smirk. “Time to rise and shine.”
I got up from the bed and stretched, the body suddenly feeling comfortable. The adjustment period was apparently short. I always expected my own body to be somewhat special, but now that I was in another one, I felt kind of the same and the whole special thing was gone. When I glanced at Katherine, she suddenly felt bigger. No… I looked at my arms. I was smaller. I grabbed Paul’s file.
Height: five feet seven inches. Weight: one hundred and fifty-six pounds. Fuck. My original body was six feet three and had over one-eighty pounds of mostly muscle. Okay, my original body was special, and I wanted it back, now. I spent my entire life training that stupid hump of flesh for combat and now I was supposed to move around in another one?
Katherine cleared her throat. “When you’re done checking yourself out, I’ll take you to the apartment we’ve prepared.”
Right, there was no way I could live in a monastery. This undercover thing was going to be complicated. I went to my original body and took the phone and the cross amulet. Standing above my own corpse felt strange. I wanted to take my hat and coat, but those didn’t fit who Paul was and would also be oversized.
Katherine stepped next to me. “Jack forgot to mention that I’m your superior for this mission.”
Brilliant. “And I suppose you’d be terribly sorry if I screwed up and you had to fire me.”
She smirked. “We both know that’s how this will end up.”
I decided shutting up would be smarter. We left the monastery and Katherine took me to a small apartment deeper in Bronx. The place featured no elevator, two small rooms, and a windowless toilet. All furniture and appliances were about my age. On a shabby table lay a laptop and next to it was a phone.
I breathed in the stale air. “Let me guess. Everything is in the laptop.”
“Which is opened by your fingerprint,” Katherine added. “Your team will live in the local VI barracks, where you will meet with your team Monday evening. I’ll pick you up here at 1700. Your paramedic practice starts tomorrow at 0800, so I’ll collect you for that at 0745. Try not to kill anyone until then.” She spun and walked out, leaving the key in the door.
I watched her leave, boots thudding on the stairs. I had to do something about this. But first, I had to get this body into shape.
The alarm clock woke me up at five thirty. Everything hurt. I groaned, counted to five, and got up from the bed. No time to waste. Dizzy and half-blind, I stumbled to the bathroom and went through the morning routine. Luckily, the Church prepared me clothes Paul would wear… okay, probably clothes Paul wore for his last mission, and those included running pants and a jacket.
I put those on and went to run. And that hurt. Sure, the first ten minutes of jogging through Bronx were fun, but then the muscles started burning and my breath got heavier. He was so out of shape.
