Surprise, Exorcise, Vanish Chapter 10

In the week since that visit to the High Seraphim’s office, Ontos had been busy.

Things moved forward with his proposal. When he’d first laid it out, many of the others at that High Table had been interested, or eager to help. Galan and Azrael had been doubtful and skeptical, respectively. But then Lady Sera had shown them the playback of the events that had transpired in that sewer.

They had still been skeptical. Three random vampires in a sewer were no threat to Heaven. Ontos agreed with them on that.

And then he told his story.

He didn’t know what magic Sera had used, but a vivid reproduction of his memories had been displayed in the conference room, seemingly projected onto the air around them like futuristic holograms. His retelling of events regarding his death and subsequent ascension had silenced theirs and any other opposition.

Afterward, Emily had started to accompany him daily. Not merely as a guide to Heaven, but as someone showing him how to be, well, him. She’d taken to teaching him the customs of Heaven, had started to introduce him to friends and acquaintances of hers. The young seraphim had many of those. It was networking, in a manner of speaking.

But more importantly, Emily had taught him how to fly. He’d taken to it instinctively and he had instantly fallen in love with it. It was difficult to describe how he felt when soaring through the sky, as he was doing right now as he flew along and above the untamed coastline below. There simply weren’t words for it. Exhilarating and sublime were the closest, and they fell short.

Emily had wanted to accompany him on this visit to the person he’d picked to be his first potential recruit. But Ontos had objected. He explained that it was a conversation that could only be had between two old soldiers. She understood, or at least he hoped she did.

The place that Emily had told him to go was a humble peninsula, one of many along the coast of this landlocked sea. The trees, climate and the smell of salt on the wind all gave him the impression of the Mediterranean. It was something that reminded him a bit too much of things he did in his past life, of places visited. Turkey, Cyprus, Albania, just to name a few.

As he flew, His destination loomed ahead. It was about what he envisioned in his mind: a kilometer in length give or take, with a wide and sandy beach on the windward side and thick vegetation and subtropical forest on the leeward. Ontos slowed and came to a relative stop, hovering and then descending below the canopy to land amidst the undergrowth.

From the sky, the place was endearing to Ontos, but down on the ground? Even he wouldn’t have minded living in a place like this in his past life. As would an old soldier, traumatized and hardened by battle. A quiet refuge, for healing and contemplation. Foraging and hunting too, if such sport interested one.

Ontos knew the kinds of people like the person he came to speak to. Shell-shocked survivors, the last living members of fire teams and squads. Old and grizzled veterans that came back to a country foreign to them, that perhaps even hated them. They tended to abandon the trappings of civilization, put down roots somewhere far away from it.

Emily had spoken of a cabin, nestled inland in a clearing on the peninsula. toward the center of the wider part of the peninsula. With a final destination in mind, Ontos started walking toward the cabin in the woods.

He couldn’t help but smile as he set forth.

--==--

It was a trope, almost. A grizzled and distinguished war hero, approached by a highly decorated military officer for some high risk and clandestine mission that only they could accomplish. 

It was just that though, a literary trope. In truth it seldom actually happened. The few times it had? It had been the other way around: someone bored of their civilian life getting restless, before going off to find some bush war somewhere in the world to fight in. Finding trouble, rather than letting the trouble find them.

The Company would sometimes headhunt that way. What often happened was those types would stick around after the fighting ended, rather than going home. They’d learn the local language and customs, marry a local woman and have children. They’d find a well-paying job in the capital, almost always as a school teacher or an ‘advisor’ to some government stooge.

Then, they’d get a visit from an employee of the nearest consulate or embassy. A simple offer, a steady paycheck for information. Enough to put their kids through private school or to serve as a nest egg for retirement.

Ontos knew after all. Once upon a time, in a life lived long ago now, he’d been that consulate employee.

Ontos walked through the trees, through the low branches that seemed to reach out to claw and scratch at him. It was fortunate then that Emily had taught him how to ‘fold’ his myriad wings. Ontos didn’t feel like ‘folding’ was the right word for it. The wings seemingly vanished from his perception. He could still feel them inside of himself though. His wings were there, yet not.

At least it would help to keep them clean. They didn’t seem to become dirty when they were tucked away into whatever internal space inside of himself they now occupied. Ontos chose not to think about it all that much, it was merely another bizarre facet of his new life.

Instead, he focused on the task at hand, the coming conversation. And just as Emily had said, the woods opened up to a clearing and a cabin.

It was nothing special. In fact, it was perhaps the most humble and… mundane structure he’d yet seen in Heaven. Rough hewn logs, an equally rough roof made of shingled bark, a door made of irregular planks. All in all, the cabin wouldn’t have been out of place as the domicile of some eccentric hermit survivalist in the Yukon.

But the cabin itself did not draw his attention as much as the angel that was sitting in the clearing before it. The woman who, though she was facing away from him and focused on the crude pottery wheel before her, was someone he instantly recognized.

“Lute.”

The woman didn’t respond to him speaking her name, not at first. He’d gotten the impression that she had been engrossed in the spinning pottery wheel such that perhaps she didn’t notice his approach. But he’d read her file. The odds were good that she’d known he was coming, even before he had landed.

“You’re new.”

Her response wasn’t an observation. No, more a statement of fact.

“I am.” Ontos stopped a dozen paces from the former Exorcist, to where he had a better view of what she was working on: a humble clay pot. The wheel came to a stop, and with a clearly practiced motion, she separated the pot from the wheel with a length of twine. She grabbed a hold of the pot, carefully turning it over and placing it on the ground next to her with several others.

“Where’s Emily?”

“Not here,” Ontos answered. “I came alone.”

“She told you where to find me?”

“She did.”

Lute climbed to her feet, something that was slightly complicated by her missing arm. Her file said she’d amputated it herself after it had been pinned by rubble.

Lute turned to face him. She was objectively beautiful like all of her fellow Exorcists were. Her picture in her file had shown her hair cut to neck length, but she’d since let it grow out. Now it formed a ponytail down between her shoulders.

“Why are you here?” She asked.

Ontos liked that. Straightforward, to the point. So he would be too. “There’s something I am working on, and I would like your help with it.”

Lute’s expression remained stony. “My help with what?”

“Would you be willing to hear me out?” He asked.

“I…” The woman trailed off with a sigh. “Okay.”

Ontos raised an eyebrow. He had been expecting more resistance, or an adamant no. No, I’m retired, or No, go away. It probably would have been his answer, had the roles been reversed.

Lute looked past him, toward the way he had come. “I asked her not to tell anyone where I was.”

“I asked politely,” Ontos said, holding his hands at ease behind him. “That being said, I was hoping that this could be between the two of us.”

“I see.” The former Exorcist spent a moment looking him up and down. “We can talk more inside.” She turned around, walking to the front door of her cabin before opening the door and ducking inside. Ontos followed after her.

--==--

He had been expecting it to be a cramped, claustrophobic affair, but this was not what he had been expecting. Because instead of a single cramped room like the exterior suggested, the door opened up to something downright palatial.

Lute caught onto his look of surprise. “It’s… bigger on the inside,” she explained.

“Like a Tardis,” Ontos breathed.

“A what?”

“It’s something from this old TV show that… Actually, never mind.” Ontos followed the other angel through the foyer. It was rustic yet ostentatious, like something a multimillionaire would build if they had wanted a mansion-sized version of a cabin in the woods. There were hallways leading to the left and right, a staircase that went up to a second floor.

Lute didn’t lead him up the stairs, instead she led him down the left corridor. As they walked, Ontos took note of the decor, which was eclectic to say the least. Exotic weapons of angelic nature, alongside mounted trophy heads of strange monstrous creatures, mixed further still with comparatively mundane items like guitars and sporting equipment.

Combined with the log cabin aesthetic, it was exactly the kind of man cave that Adam, the late leader of the Exorcists, would have called his own. Ontos merely found it tasteless and gaudy.

Interestingly, the sitting room at the end of the hallway was marginally more tasteful. The eclectic decor gave way to a selection of more classical tastes, landscape paintings intermixed with sculptures and marble busts on plinths. The center area was occupied by matching furniture, sofas and couches cushioned with arsenic green fabric.

The room looked like it had been cut and pasted from Victorian England. It was something the Queen probably would have fancied.

“This is your home?” He asked her.

“No. Yes, I…” Lute trailed off. “It was Adam’s, until he…”

“He left it to you.”

Lute nodded. Her body language was not at all what he anticipated from the number two officer of the Exorcists. Rather than confidence, she seemed resigned, defeated almost.

Lost.

“Do you want something to drink?” She offered after a moment.

“Water would be fine,” Ontos smiled.

Lute nodded. There was a fancy wood minibar off to the side of the room, a handful of beverages on display. “You know, I was wondering who would come looking for me eventually.”

“Oh?” He walked over to one of the two sofas, sitting down in its middle. He managed to make himself comfortable, despite the furniture being sized for someone a foot and change shorter than himself.

“Besides Emily.” She poured water from a glass pitcher into one glass, for herself, she poured something alcoholic into another. With one hand she carefully brought both glasses back to where Ontos was sitting, placing his down on the low table between them before sitting down with her own. “Until now, Emily was the only one that visited. Not even the other Exorcists came.”

“I see,” Ontos said. “She cares about everyone.”

“That’s her nature.” Lute smiled, sipping from the amber in her glass. “I tried to get her to have some of this,” she said, holding up the glass. “I don’t know who makes it or where Adam even got it from, but he’d always have a glass with me after an extermination.” The other woman’s face darkened. “So, why did you come here?”

“To offer you a new career path, if you are so inclined.” Ontos knew that Lute was intelligent, extremely so. He’d immediately gotten the impression that the crazed bravado and almost psychotic behavior he’d observed in archival video of her past… trips to Hell were not what they seemed. The old analyst in him was curious, yet flummoxed.

And then he realized it. It was equal parts obfuscation and mask, a way to earn her master’s affection and her teammates’ respect. Something that they had all sought from that man, something they themselves, being orphans that died as children, never had.

Unfortunately for them, for the young women that Adam surrounded himself with, he was simply incapable of reciprocating love. Narcissism and psychopathy in spades, clear sociopathic behaviors, just to name just a few issues. The man had been a walking personality disorder made manifest. That same analyst was disgusted by the man, revolted even.

In reality, the only thing Adam cared about was himself, and to a lesser extent his minions being mindless killers and following his orders. They were extensions of his will, nothing more and nothing less.

But Ontos didn’t want a mindless killer, he wanted an administrator. And by dint of being the second to Adam and his merry band of Exorcists, the woman before him had become good at the administrative side of things. Paperwork, office work. Administration, in other words.

He knew she was good at it. Why? Because Ontos didn’t even know what Adam’s signature looked like. When something needed a signature, Lute handled it.

She also had leadership potential as well. Perhaps it was learned, perhaps it was innate. Either way, Lute had a degree of feminine charm when she hadn’t been playing pretend psycho.

While he’d been reflecting on his own thoughts, Lute had likewise been thinking. Eventually she broke the silence. “Didn’t Emily tell you? I’m retired.” Lute took a swig from the glass. She had poured a tall glass of something he himself would have himself sipped from a shot glass. “I… I’m sorry, but I just kinda want to stay here for now. Better memories than out there.”

“I see,” Ontos said. “Then would you agree to a simple consultation then?”

“A… what?”

“I’d only ask that you have a look at what I am working on. Your perspective, in other words.”

Lute frowned, then sighed. “What is it exactly that the tall b-” She cut herself off. “The High Seraphim has you doing?”

Ontos smirked. “It is perhaps better if I showed you.” He reached into his suit, pulling out the manila folder within that contained the most recent draft and outline of his proposal, as he learned more and expanded the outline, the folder had grown in thickness. He set it on the low table between them, pushing it over to her side. “Please, have a look.”

Lute set down her glass, before reaching over to open the folder. She took the cover letter on top of the stack, a summary of the contents. Lute read it, eyes quickly scanning the text. “What.”

“What?”

“Just… what.” She set the paper down on the stack. “You’re crazy.”

“I’ve been called many things, crazy among them.”

“What even is an…” She looked down to re-read the header, “intelligence agency?”

Ontos smiled. “The name is self-evident. An agency that gathers intelligence on an adversarial threat, and if need be, act on it. Not merely from Hell, but Earth as well.”

“Heaven doesn’t care about Earth,” Lute said.

“Things change, and recent events have catalyzed that change,” Ontos said. “Your late boss’s recent actions compelled our shared boss to, well, recruit me.” And wasn’t that a novel use of the phrase.

Lute thought about his words for a moment. “Adam really screwed the pooch, didn’t he?”

“Your words, not mine.”

Lute laughed, “He screwed up so hard the big man himself stepped in? That’s… That’s just great.” She took her glass up, knocking back a healthy amount of the contents in a single draw. “And you’re here to, what, give me another chance?”

Ontos raised a brow. “In a manner of speaking, and if that’s how you want to see it as such. Are you interested after all?”

“Maybe. A little. So, what does all this,” she gestured at the folder and its contents, “really entail?”

“It’s all there, in plain english.”

Lute scowled. “No, not the legal nonsense that you told the other idiots of Throne, what does it really entail?”

In layman’s terms then. Time for his elevator pitch. “There are things out there, Lute,” he began. “I’ve seen them. I’ve fought them. I died fighting them. If you take up the offer I am about to make you? You will see them too, and you will likely fight them too as well. And before you ask, yes, they even have the potential to bring their war to Heaven’s doorstep.” 

Ontos continued. “In my past life, I worked to make a small part of the world a little better. I died, fighting for something I believed, a home that would have been burned in hellfire had I or someone else not made an ultimate sacrifice. And then I met someone who understood, and realized the stakes at play. And he agreed.”

Lute’s eyes narrowed, then they widened. “You’re human,” she realized.

“I was, and I am now something more.”

“I- I didn’t know there were any Winners amongst the seraphim.”

“I am the first.”

“Why?”

“Because that,” Ontos gestured at the folder on the table, “Will require a human perspective to achieve.”

“I don’t even know what to say. I’m just the crazy bitch that Adam kept around as a, a bed warmer-”

“No, you are more than that,” He cut her off.

“Now you sound like Emily,” Lute said.

“And she would agree with me in that regard, albeit for a different set of reasons. But mine are why I am here.”

Lute opened her mouth, before closing it. She was silent for a brief spell.

“You asked me what it really means?” Ontos smiled. “That the game has changed, and so too have the stakes. Up until now, you were an amateur. But this,” he gestured at the envelope on the table, “is the big leagues.” Ontos blinked. “I realize I used a baseball analogy when you might not understand that.”

Lute smiled. “I do. Adam liked it, once.”

“I see.”

“There’s a bat he got some famous player to sign somewhere.” She finished off the dregs of her drink with a swig. “Suppose I am interested,” Lute said, “What would I do, exactly?”

“Not what you were doing before. Wet work wouldn’t be part of your job description in that sense. Officially, you would be my direct subordinate.”

She blinked. “And what would that entail?”

“A bit of everything. Administration, personnel management, logistics, so on and so forth,” Ontos ticked down his fingers as he listed them. “And you would have the same level of authority as I do, in my absence.” He knew the other seraphim had their own eccentric minions and subordinates they trusted to handle things in their absence - he’d already met one.

“I see.” Lute rubbed her arm, the one cut short. “I’m not exactly popular with the High Seraphim.”

“We can work on that.”

Lute said nothing for a beat. “Can I have some time to think about this?”

“Certainly,” Ontos said. He had no intention of forcing the issue. Though if she declined, it would have been a pity.

“By the way, it’s Hennessey.”

“What?”

“The whiskey you said Adam liked,” Ontos explained.

“Oh,” Lute blinked. “How did you know that?”

Ontos smiled, “It’s from Earth.” He stood up, leaving the folder and the empty glass on the table. “I wasn’t much for spirits though, I preferred lighter beverages.”

Lute said nothing at that. “I just realized something, I never even asked you your name.”

“Ontos,” he smiled, reaching out a hand and offering a handshake.

Lute took it, her hand enveloped by his own. “Lute, though you already know that. Give me some time to think about it.”

“Take all the time you need.”

It would give him time to make an offer to the man that was next on his list.