Surprise, Exorcise, Vanish Chapter 9

"Thank you for telling me."

That was all he could really manage to say, given what he had just been shown.

The nightmare of LA had never happened.

"What year is it?" Ontos managed to ask after a moment.

"What year do you think it is?"

Ontos frowned. "Two thousand and five."

The new face in the room chuckled. He was an angel who looked like he didn't belong amongst the rest in the office. His cargo shorts, crisp Hawaiian shirt and bleached and spiked hair contrasted sharply with the more elegant and formal attire worn by the others."You're about twenty years out of date. Well, nineteen," he corrected himself. "Eh, close enough really."

"Ontos, it's twenty-twenty-four, by the Gregorian calendar," Michael explained.

Ontos said nothing. His mind was awhirl in thought. Twenty years. It felt like yesterday. In some manner of speaking, it technically was. In all the manners that actually mattered though-

"Ontos?" Emily laid a hand on one of his wings. The contact from his fellow seraphim knocked him out of his fugue. "It's okay. Sometimes, Winners arrive a while after they pass."

Michael shook his head. "Weeks, sometimes longer. Two decades though is quite the outlier. I've never heard of it taking that long to arrive."

"His arrival was decidedly non-standard however," Sera noted.

Ontos said nothing. The Divine in his wisdom probably had had a reason to bring him back so long after he died, to this time and most certainly to this place.

But that was one thing. This though? He returned his gaze to the skyline in the orb. "That's not Venture Tower."

"Venture… what?"

Ontos gestured at the orb. "The tallest building in Los Angeles."

"Oh, you mean the Library Tower?"

The what? "No."

"Or the Bank Tower, or whatever they're calling it these days." The man, Zachariah was his name, strode over to the orb and placed a hand onto it. He made a pinching motion on its surface, and the view zoomed in on the tallest of the skyscrapers. Where Venture Tower had been square and gothic, the skyscraper now occupying its footprint was cylindrical and postmodern.

Ontos didn't recognize it.

It must have showed in his face, as Zachariah raised an eyebrow. "See? I knew he was from a darker timeline. He has no clue what I'm on about."

"I still think it's silly," Michael said. "How can there be an entire other… reality, as you called it?"

"Did they rebuild after the attack?" Ontos asked.

"Again, alternate timeline."

"Hey, if there's another Earth, could there be another Heaven?" Emily spoke up. "Ooh! Maybe there's another me!"

Zacharaiah shrugged. "Probably another me too-"

"Enough." Sera stood from her desk, rising to her full height. "Ontos?"

"Ma'am?"

The Lady Seraphim gestured to the orb on her desk, "I am hoping you can understand our confusion."

"I… am as confused as you, I'm afraid."

The High Seraphim sighed. "Apparently, this city is intact, and not in ruins as you alleged."

"Is it a real time feed?" Ontos asked.

"It's as real time as it gets." Zachariah pinch-zoomed the view, magnifying a place he recognized as the Santa Monica pier. He zoomed in, all the way until a couple sitting in one of the ferris wheel cars was clearly visible. Two women, sharing a massive bough of cotton candy. "These Palantirs are pretty powerful."

"I see."

"Ontos, for what it's worth, I believe you," Michael said. "You've experienced those events, that I know for certain."

"I believe you as well," Emily said by his side.

"I… I need…" Ontos fell silent.

"Ontos?"

Los Angeles never happened.

He never died.

And yet… yet he did.

"I just need to think." He rubbed his eyes.

"Ontos, whatever has happened, The Creator has his reasons for doing what he did."

"Mysterious ways and all that, I'm sure."

Sera glared at the man before continuing. "Please, Ontos, take a recess to gather your thoughts. Afterwards, we can continue."

"I sound like I made it up."

"You speak the truth, that I can tell." Sera smiled. "That, and I can see the pain in your face when you remember those events."

"The soul remembers, Ontos." Emily explained.

Ontos couldn't help but agree. He doubted he would ever forget what happened, even though it seemingly never had.

--==--

At some point, Emily had led him away from Lady Sera's office to an outdoor space, an enclosed and secluded courtyard of sorts. He was still within the grounds of the Throne, The colossal dome dominating the view from almost anywhere in Paradise. He'd asked to be left alone, to be given some space, and she'd obliged. Ontos just needed to think, and think alone.

And alone he was. He'd all but collapsed into a park bench, stone-hewn yet comfortable all the same. And there he remained, eyes on the sky for perhaps an hour or more.

He'd noticed the rings up there yesterday. Emily had explained that they were a feature of Heaven, and could be seen from practically anywhere. She had claimed The Creator had placed them there an eon ago, had actually taken off his halos and hung them in the very sky.

Once, he'd had a passing interest in science fiction, the works of the greats like Asimov and Heinlein. They had been a source of escapism, from the boring drudgery that was Company field work. The interest faded as he rose through the ranks, but the wild imagery of mind-boggling megastructures in the empty void hadn't.

He wondered if they were actually some sort of colossal orbital structure encircling the world Heaven resided on. They probably were. It didn't surprise him that such a thing could exist. Everything he'd seen so far, experienced so far might as well have been magic.

There was a line from a visionary about that. Clarke, he recalled.

Ontos sighed. Why was he here?

Just do what comes natural.

"I like the suit."

The comment, spoken by someone he knew approaching him, jolted Ontos from his thoughts.

He looked over to the speaker. Michael was there, a coffee cup in each hand.

"Am I interrupting you?"

Ontos shrugged. "There's nothing to interrupt."

"May I sit?" He gestured to the empty space on the bench.

"Of course."

Michael sat next to him on the bench, offering one of the cups to Ontos as he did. "I feel like you're the kind of person to take their coffee black."

"I do." Ontos smiled and took the cup. "Thank you, you didn't have to."

"You looked like you needed a pick me up, especially after…" His fellow seraphim fell silent. "You seemed so confident earlier, and now…"

Ontos didn't respond, not yet. The cup he'd been given would have been a comically sized affair in anyone else's hands, but in his it was modest. He took a sip, relishing the taste. It was good coffee, far beyond even the better cups he'd had in his life.

"I had it made for that meeting."

"Your outfit, you mean?"

"Yes." Ontos studied his suit cuff, the link attached to it that had been an afterthought. It was modeled after his halo, a penta of vertical lines around a ring. The symbol that the arrangement of shapes formed was oddly appealing to him. "I thought it would be a good idea to wear my best. That, and I feel more comfortable in a suit."

"I really like the look," Michael smiled. "Like you belong. The Tailor, right?"

"Indeed. Did Emily send you?" He asked.

"Not at all," Michael shrugged. "When I saw you weren't with her, I inferred you wanted space."

Ontos nodded. "She's a good person."

"She's the best of us."

Neither spoke for a beat.

"Do you know why I'm here, Michael?" Ontos broke the silence.

"No. But I thought-"

"I don't either," Ontos cut him off. "Not anymore."

Michael didn't reply. Ontos didn't need to glance at his face to know there was a look of surprise there. He continued without missing a beat. "I thought I did, when I woke up this morning. But now? Now, I'm not so sure." He took another sip. "How else do you react to finding out you've not only been dead for twenty years, but you aren't even in the same world, or dimension or whatever?"

"When you put it like that? Yeah." Michael sipped his own drink. "I can honestly say that I can't easily relate." Nothing was said for a long moment, until Michael broke the silence. "Before, what were you planning?"

"I've already told you, the others."

"Rephrase it."

Ontos thought for a beat, before speaking. "Abridged? A group, reasonably sized and agile, that would respond to existential threats to Heaven, be they on Earth or in Hell. With room to expand, in reaction to threats both salient and anticipated." It had been his plan, even before he learned about recent events.

Emily had explained Hell to him briefly, as well as its leadership, including someone she was acquainted with by the name of Charlie. She was the heir apparent of Hell's throne, the daughter of its ruler, Lucifer. There was probably a story there, how the two seemed to know one another.

She also told him of an annual raid, so-called 'exterminations' carried out by angels called Exorcists, of a man named Adam that was the biblical figure himself. The exterminations had only come to an end recently, when their leader and many of their members perished. The denizens of Hell had finally gathered the courage to rise up and fight back, and the result had been bloody.

That hadn't been surprising to him. The Creator had already explained the circumstances to him, although Emily had filled in the details as well as she could. Ontos could read between the lines, see the complacency and arrogance. The tag team duo that had undone a great many leaders and even empires through history.

Michael had called Lucifer his brother, Ontos remembered. The past tense had been implied. It must have been quite the falling out. That, and the biblical Adam being some kind of self-styled angelic warlord? That the Bible omitted a great deal went without saying.

"So what changed?"

Ontos sighed. He thought for a moment, before speaking. "Before I died, I caught a glimpse of something."

"Of what?"

"A masquerade." That was what he had called it. Who had it been, the one with the biker getup? Jack, right, he remembered his name. "For a brief moment in time, I saw past the veil, past the curtain next to the Wizard's throne. Only there wasn't an old man yanking on levers and ropes, but horrors beyond comprehension and monsters too numerous to count."

Ontos looked over at Michael. "I saw all of that and more, and I realized that there would be no end to the darkness. I wouldn't see the end of it in my lifetime, even if I somehow survived."

"I see."

"Do you?"

"Trust me, I do." Michael smiled. "You speak of horrors, of monsters. I've fought both, Ontos." he patted the sword, now resting on his lap. This blade isn't ceremonial, far from it. "I've defended this realm with it, many times now."

He spoke the unfettered truth. Ontos knew that the person sitting next to him was far, far older than he looked. His youthful demeanor and appearance belied the fact. "Against what?" He dared to ask.

Michael took a long sip from his cup. He looked up at the sky, at the twin bands of the rings that hung there. No, he was looking past them. "Eldritch things, out there in the void. Things that, for whatever reason, turned their ponderous gaze towards these realms and sought to sunder or perhaps devour them. Myself, others, mustered out to engage them, to slay them."

Another sip. "Once, they even made it to Earth. We sallied forth all the same, fought and slew three of the nightmares that sought to remake your old world in their twisted image. That was a hard fight, perhaps the hardest of them all."

He looked down and over to Ontos. "But thankfully, there haven't been any of those lately. I fear I've become rather sedentary due to garrison duty."

"You sound like you have some war stories to tell."

"If you tell me yours."

"I doubt you'd be enthused by stories of guard duty or paperwork."

Michael laughed. "No worse than garrisoning here at the Throne."

Ontos couldn't help but smile as well.

"But you didn't answer my question from earlier, about what changed."

Ontos thought about it. "I don't know what… this Earth is like. Well, your Earth."

"Don't tell me that Reaper has swayed you with his claims?"

"They're as plausible as anything else could be." Some of those old sci-fi TV shows had been about interdimensional travel, peering though the looking glass at a different series of world events or an alternate history. Funny, how a change of perspective such as his opened the mind to such possibilities.

"But still, why do you think that?"

"The Los Angeles skyline is different from what I recall," Ontos stated. "Which means a lot of other things are going to be different too. Large things, small things, the things that hide in the shadows. The monsters going bump in the night that I glimpsed? They might not even exist here."

"I see." Michael smiled, draining the rest of his cup. "Well, why don't we go look?"

"How so?"

"We have the Palantirs," Micahel said.

"Lord of the Rings."

"Oh?"

"A series of fantasy novels," Ontos explained. "That's where the name's from."

"It's what Azrael calls them. He presumably got the name from his favorite lieutenant."

"Zacharaiah, the Reaper from earlier."

"The one. He's rather eccentric, highly skilled and well-read."

"I see," Ontos stood up. "Well then, lead the way back."

--==--

The world that Heaven called Earth wasn't the one he had once called his own. That much was obvious.

Case in point, the city of Los Angeles. Much of everything he already knew and recognized was more or less the same, to a certain degree. The broad strokes, the shape of the city. Many of the fine strokes as well. The Observatory, the Hollywood sign. The Santa Monica Pier, replete with its iconic ferris wheel.

But at some point things diverged and deviated. When and where, Ontos couldn't even begin to guess. The skyline was the most notable change, that damnable building that had been the end of him wholly absent, as were many others. In their places were buildings he neither recognized nor had names for.

To him, the incongruity indicated a city, no, an entire world that had never experienced the horrors that he had experienced. He hoped they never would.

Emily and Zachariah had returned to that office not long after he and Michael had. They were sharing a bucket of popcorn. From where they'd procured it, Ontos didn't know. Only Sera remained absent, other business keeping her.

The Palantir had unerringly continued to follow the couple during what appeared to be a girls' night out. Ontos regarded the duo. Both had the sort of punk counterculture vibe that stood at odds with his more straight-laced sensibilities. The taller of the pair wore a ratty tube top, skirt and sneakers, her dyed hair done up to show off piercings. The shorter was dressed more conservatively, black sweater over a red blouse, a black beanie, skirt and shoes completing the look.

At that moment, they were strolling along the California beach huddled up with one another, perhaps to ward off the evening chill rolling off of the Pacific. Neither of them had a care in the world, or awareness of the fact they were being spied upon from the highest office in the land.

"Zachariah, was it? How exactly do you use this?" Ontos asked. He understood the motions the man had used, though if there was something else required?

"Well me, I gotta wrangle the view," the Reaper explained. "I can't for the life of me get the thing to work by feel, so I kinda handle it like a phone screen. But most people that use them regularly can just touch one and, well, tell it where to look? My boss can touch one and it goes to where he wants the view to go. And you can call me Zach if you want, it rolls off the tongue smoother."

"What our acquaintance here is trying to say, Ontos, is that we control them through heartfelt intention. May I?"

He nodded, stepping away to allow his fellow seraphim to use the device. He placed a hand on its surface, and LA vanished in a blur. A second later, an entirely different city appeared.

Ontos recognized it instantly. The ancient stone architecture and red tile roofs, the gilded Islamic dome that defined its skyline. The Old City of Jerusalem.

"It's been a while since I was there." Ontos said. "You?"

"Many years," Michael replied. For a brief moment, his gaze darkened. There was a story there, a dark one, but Ontos wasn't about to pry. The view again blurred, returning back to LA. "These orbs work less through direct thought and more through emotion and feel. They show you what your heart wants to see, where it wants to be."

"Are there many places that are really nice on Earth?"

"Depends on your definition of nice," Zach patted Emily's shoulder. "I'm partial to glitz and glam and neon lights."

Michael stepped away, gesturing to the orb. "Don't force it, let your heart guide it."

Ontos nodded. "I think I understand." He stepped up to the orb, once more placing a hand on its surface.

"Ontos, what are you looking for though?"

"For a masquerade."

"A what?"

"A masquerade," he repeated. It was an apt description. "Or evidence of it. The group of people I met during all of what happened had called it that. It was sort of… disinformation campaign?" There were probably better, more succinct words to describe it, but he went with the terminology he knew.

"Disinformation," Zach said. "What were they trying to hide?"

"Themselves, from the world. And monsters, like what attacked LA." Ontos sighed. "I'm not going to sound any less crazy, but the group I'm talking about were apparently vampires."

A beat passed in silence. Emily munched on popcorn. "You're serious," Zach spoke.

"Very."

Emily swallowed. "What's a vampire?"

"An undead, bloodsucking creature of the night."

"That doesn't sound very nice."

Ontos shrugged. "The ones I met were… affable. They were willing to fight alongside me until the end, and that counted for something. But there were others, a lot of others, that fit the bill of monsters."

"So, we're looking for vampires?"

"I suppose. Those, and other things that went bump in the night." When it came down to the wire, there was nothing to bump back. A city suffered and good men paid the ultimate price. But those four had been there to back up his own team at the end. Whether their choice to fight had been out of loyalty to Uncle Sam or simple pragmatism, he'd never truly know for sure.

"Well, where do we start?" Zach broke the silence.

"We?"

"You're the single most interesting thing that's happened around here in years," the Reaper grinned. "You walked out of the pages of pulp sci-fi. You want to do things, and I can't help but want to be a part of it."

Ontos just shrugged. He thought back to when he first met the self-proclaimed 'Baron' of LA. He'd called himself Nines, held himself well despite the denim jeans and summer wear. He'd owned a bar in downtown, the kinds of place a biker gang would call home-

The orb flickered. He recognized the street and overpass, but there was no bar there. Instead, a familiar Irish-themed eatery occupied the lot.

"O'Tolley's. Hate the food there. Swear they put something in the meat."

"Like what?" Emily asked.

"Dunno, and I don't think I ever want to know."

Ontos agreed with the two. In his past life he shared the sentiment. The chain's food was an affront to humanity.

A thought, and the view shifted away. Further downtown, toward where that building should have been. In its place was the postmodern edifice he'd seen earlier. Zach had called it the Library Tower. It probably filled the same niche as Venture Tower did, mixed use commercial and offices.

"Is this place important to you, Ontos?"

"Yes and no," he answered. "This building though? I don't recognize it."

"Venture Tower, you said?"

Ontos nodded, grimly. He had a whole other connection to the building, once upon a time. Weeks or decades ago, he'd looked into the allegations of terrorism regarding a series of attacks on the skyscraper. The Twin Towers were still fresh on people's minds, and though the Company's remit was foreign and not domestic soil, the lines between the two had blurred to the point that not too many in the Beltway cared if the Company overstepped its bounds.

But the team he'd assigned to help him had found nothing that would suggest foreign involvement. More accurately, they had found nothing at all. And then out of the blue, his boss had ordered him to drop any further inquiries into the matter. He'd complied of course, presuming at the moment the orders had come from even higher up. It had been an election year after all.

But to the man Ontos used to be though, it screamed cover-up. Whatever had happened to cause the dozens of deaths had been buried to be forgotten, and that man had been smart enough to let sleeping dogs lie. But a part of him had always wondered what had actually happened, if only from an academic perspective.

But this was not that world. This was not that tower. Still, the memories were sharp, still salient. The sounds of the screams and the dying. The smell of gunsmoke charred flesh. The wet slick of blood where-

He became aware of Emily standing there, next to him, a hand reassuringly on one of his wings. "You went quiet for a while," she said.

"So, what's the story?" Zach asked.

"This is where I died."

"Oh." The word hung in the air for a brief moment. "Never mind then."

"Ontos, we can move on."

"Michael, it's fine. I just…"

"Ontos?"

He sighed, breathed. "I needed a moment."

Where else? He wasn't sure.

No, actually, there was one other place.

The sewers.

That last night, that last mission, their path had taken them through LA's underworks. The sprawling patchwork of sewers, utility tunnels and disused corridors beneath the City of Angels. Something Nines had said as they made their way through the tunnels beneath downtown. This used to be a Sabbat haven. One of those freaks called it home. A friend of ours flushed him out, no pun intended.

Their group, Ontos's team and his, had stopped in a retention chamber. It had initially been meant to hold stormwater, but had long been repurposed into some sort of clandestine safehouse. Nines had called it a haven…

The view shifted a final time, and now it was something completely different. That storm drain beneath LA came into focus, as dark and foreboding as he remembered it. Only now it was very much occupied.

The decor was… horrifying to say the least. Garish, occult symbols were painted on the walls. Hooks and chains hung from the high ceiling, some with human skulls attached to them. There were bunks and tables, among other signs of habitation. Storage crates, some covered in weapons and other military hardware. A single small camping lantern illuminated the space, feeble light barely illuminating the vast chamber.

Around the light sat three figures, a man and a woman who seemed normal looking enough. But the third… The third looked downright freakish. Alabaster complexion, a bald hairless scalp and long elfin ears. Like the titular Nosferatu, from the old black and white movie. Ontos had no clue as to their gender, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

He had seen someone with a similar appearance as part of Nines's posse at that bar, he remembered. He'd never gotten their name though, or an explanation as to their appearance. They had been too busy fighting.

"-that leaves the situation up north," the male said. So the orb could eavesdrop onto ongoing conversations? interesting.

"What about our 'friends' up there?" The woman asked.

"Staked, probably," the man said. "Haven't heard from 'em in days. The Baron up in San Fran has it in for us. Damn Tremere antitribu, just like this town's Baron."

"This city's Baron is Malkavian."

"Santa Monica's is," The woman spat. "That Bedlam bitch and her pet manwhore couldn't run this town if they tried. But the real Baron, the Tremere that's set up shop in her ivory tower? New scariest bitch on the west coast."

"From the way you keep talking about her, it sounds like you want to go run off and join her," The Nosferatu finally spoke.

"Hell no."

"Good," the freaky one sneered. "Since the Baron's pussy isn't in your mouth, maybe you can be a good little Sabbat soldier and start sounding like one-"

"Shut up."

The other two looked at the woman. "Kamal?"

"Shut the fuck up, both of you," she suddenly ordered. "We're being Auspexed."

"What!?" "How!?" The other two said in unison.

The woman abruptly stood up. "I don't know! The fetish should have prevented it!" She was looking around, but not at her surroundings, Ontos realized, but beyond them. She looked this way and that before stopping, and her gaze pivoted-

To look directly back at him.

The woman stopped, staring in shock. He wondered if he could actually somehow see him.

He didn't have to wonder.

The woman smiled a predator's smile, elongated canines on full display.

Ontos pulled away from the Palantir, the view going blank.

The room was silent for a beat.

"Ontos, what… was that?"

"I…" Ontos fell silent. He didn't need to say anything.

Because he had his proof.

There were monsters here too.

"So, what's a fetish?" Emily asked.