Sleeping Late on Judgement Day Page 20

  “Ms. Sepanta,” I said, somehow mustering enough saliva to speak without croaking. “So nice of you to see me. My editors are going to be thrilled.”

  “Come in, Mr. Bell.” The voice was a stunning, throaty alto, but I thought I could also hear the childlike tones of Anaita, the angelic ephor, lurking inside it, like tiny pearls wrapped in black velvet.

  As she walked toward me I saw her eyes widen just a small, almost unnoticeable fraction; she quickly covered it with a smile so white and perfect I had to fight the urge to fall to my knees all over again. Either she’d just decided I was one sexy dude or she’d pierced my cover already, from all the way across the room. “I’ve been waiting for you.” She took my hand in her warm, dry one—and how did she stay dry in a room that felt like a sauna? She looked me in the eyes long enough to make my hand sweat even more, then let it go. “Will you have something to drink?”

  I said yes, hoping that Oxana might be left alone somewhere while Arash the high priest or whoever he was went to fetch it, but Donya Sepanta only returned to her desk and pushed a button on her phone and asked someone to bring in some refreshments.

  “You have an amazing house,” I said. My heart was beating so hard I was surprised it wasn’t rattling the windows. It was really her sitting there, the one who’d tried to erase me from existence. We were finally, actually face-to-face. “Just beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” She paused as a maid dressed in a tunic over loose pants tiptoed in with a platter and set out ice water and lemonade on a small table near the window, then put down a plate of fruit and went out as silently as she’d come in. “Let’s sit here where we can see the garden. It is my greatest joy.” Her voice was like honey. I’m not talking about the cliché, I’m talking about how hearing her talk really felt like something sweet and golden and warm and sticky was being poured over me.

  Goddess of Fertility indeed. Just being in the same room with her made me want to fertilize everything in sight. I took a few pieces of melon and a half a pomegranate onto a plate to give me something to fiddle with, then forced myself to concentrate, when all I really wanted to do was lie down and listen to her.

  Despite her enormous beauty and supreme self-confidence, I thought I could sense a bit of tension in my hostess. She knew who I was, I felt sure, or at least what I was. Which was no more than I had expected would happen, although I had hoped the suspense might last a little longer.

  “So, here we are,” she said, and laughed. Her laugh was predictably melodious. “You must have lots of questions you want to ask me. Please, feel free.”

  Don’t be stupid, Bobby, I told myself. She’s playing it straight—you have to, too. But I couldn’t help feeling that maybe what Anaita was playing was me. “Oh, we have lots of questions about your fascinating life and your even more fascinating work, Ms. Sepanta,” I said. “Everybody I’ve met here in San Judas talks about all the things you’ve done for the city—but we’ll do most of this in the interview, of course. I just like to . . . get a feel for people. See them on their home turf.”

  “Well, you are a most thorough young man!” She laughed again. She might be a little tense, but I was feeling more and more like I was the one sitting in a cage with a very large, very beautiful lioness who could swallow me whole without crimping a whisker. “I admire that. And are you . . . getting a feeling?”

  “I’m a bit overwhelmed, to tell the truth. This is all so impressive.”

  She gave a careless flip of her perfectly manicured hand. “I need a place where I can get away from the stress. The modern world is a very tiring place, I think. How about you, Mr. Bell? Do you find the modern world a bit much at times?”

  “I guess. But it’s the only world I’ve got.”

  “Ah.” She sat back with her glass of water, toyed with the lemon peel floating in the glass. “Myself, I long for the old days. You know this is not my native home, yes?”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “Then you can imagine how much more important it is for me to feel safe here, in this new home of mine. That is why I have so much security. I’m sure you must have noticed the guards.”

  “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  “I do not wish to be . . . paranoid.” She smiled again. “But a woman in my position—well, there are people against whom I must protect myself. Bad people. Both from my old country and from this new land, where privacy is so hard to acquire. Satellites, computer hackers, so many people and magical devices which can pierce secrets, destroy privacy, ruin lives.”

  That was clearly a message, but I wasn’t sure how to read it. Still, I was ahead of the game at this point simply because she hadn’t called in the guards to rip my head off—or worse, called Heaven to let them know she had a rogue angel in her conservatory. “Is that a worry for you, Ms. Sepanta? People from your past trying to hurt you?”

  “Oh, I have made it sound too dramatic. No, most of the reason I desire privacy is because I wish to avoid the kind of people who prey upon the rich and the successful. Kidnappers. Blackmailers.”

  Ah. I was beginning to get it. I deliberately went another direction. “Kidnappers, yes, of course. Do you have family, Ms. Sepanta?”

  Her lip curled, and the fear came back into my chest. “I do not wish to talk about such private things, Mr. Bell, to you or your magazine.” Her expression softened. “I’m sure you can understand. And we have lots of other things to discuss.” She poured herself a little more water, and when she spoke it was very deliberate. “Now, tell me exactly what you need from me.”

  Anaita thought I was blackmailing her. She thought I was here to let her know I was aware of her earthly life, and maybe even to suggest there were other, more deadly secrets I knew, in hopes that she would pay me off. Or maybe just in hopes that she’d leave me alone. I didn’t know whether I wanted her to go on thinking that or not, so I proceeded very carefully.

  “All I want from you, Ms. Sepanta, are a few answers. I know your time is precious, and that you have other places you need to be and other people to answer to besides a humble journalist like myself. I’d just like to know a few things about what makes you who you are.”

  “Is that really what you want?” She leaned back a little and looked at me with a calculation I hadn’t seen so far. I was stupid if I believed I could outthink her, I realized. This was a being that had been around forever, or as good as, and had survived the loss of her worshippers and her country, only to set herself up all over again as a major player in Heaven. She was a survivor, and they were the toughest kind of enemy to deal with, because they played the long game and didn’t jump to ordinary bait. Why should she blast me to cinders now? She had as much time as she needed, and I had nothing but stubbornness and the occasional streak of dumb luck. Those streaks never lasted very long, either.

  “I’m just curious,” I said. “You’ve gone to so much trouble to create an entire world for yourself—a beautiful world.” I looked around as though I was talking about the huge house and the vast grounds, but we both knew I wasn’t. “A beautiful world that isn’t your old world, but isn’t part of your new one, either. A kind of between-place, I guess you’d say.” I let that hang for a moment. “Why? I mean, forgive me for being blunt, but you must have invested a great deal in this project. Is it so important to you to have something that is not of either world?”

  Her smile, when it came, was slow and extremely sexy. If I wasn’t an angel, or at least if all the non-meat parts of me weren’t angelic, I would have instantly had a hard-on or a heart attack or both.

  “You are a very interesting man, Mr. Bell. Are those the kinds of questions you intend to ask in your interview? Nothing more mundane and practical? Others always want to know, how much do you have, what do you own—material things. But you want answers to difficult questions.”

  “That’s my nature, Ms. Sepanta. I’ve always been more interested in the why than the ho
w much.”

  “Well, then,” she said, and rose from her chair with a movement so sudden and yet so graceful that it was like watching a great bird take wing, “you must think of all such questions that you can, Richard Bell, to prepare yourself for the next stage of our interaction. May I call you Richard? Because we will have our interview. I can tell already that it is fated for us to meet again.” She pushed a button on her desk. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but I have an important phone call coming.”

  “Of course,” I said, caught by surprise but quite ready to get out while the getting was good. “I wouldn’t want to keep you.”

  “But do prepare yourself.” The door opened and Arash stepped in, clearly waiting for me. “Because I promise you, next time you will have your answers,” she said. “All of them. And some of them will surprise even a man like yourself.” She nodded to Arash. “You may show our guest out.”

  I grabbed Oxana from the reception room and tried to walk like something other than a guy who had almost pissed himself in terror because a beautiful woman had told him they were going to meet again. When we got to the car, I threw myself into the back seat and concentrated on breathing again. It felt like I hadn’t really done it for a while.

  “Drive,” I said. “Just drive.”

  Halyna shrugged and put the car in gear, and we crept around the long driveway. Oxana started chattering to her friend about the inside of the house, then turned to me. “Lots of pictures, Bobby. I took them just like you said.”

  We rolled through the first gate. Beyond the green hills I could see the bay, far, far below and far away—an entire world away.

  “Did you hear, Bobby?” Oxana said. “I make lots of pictures.”

  “Don’t talk for a while,” I said. “Please. And Halyna, take it slow on the curves, will you? I don’t feel all that great.”

  twenty-one

  car problems

  IT WAS barely past noon when we got back to Caz’s apartment, but I went and lay down on the couch, pulled a pillow over my head to kill the noise of the Amazons’ watching Judge Judy, then fell into a deep, unpleasant sleep. I was exhausted in mind and body—just being in Anaita’s presence had been like a couple of hours under fire in combat, plus the idea of what I’d done was just beginning to settle in.

  I dreamed of Caz, but this time I was on a high hilltop looking down, like the view of San Jude I’d had from Donya Sepanta’s house. Terrible things being done to the woman I loved were happening far away, which didn’t make them any less horrible, it just made me more helpless. I woke up sweating, got myself a real drink, and went out into the courtyard to mull it all over.

  Whatever heat the late November sun had brought to San Judas was already starting to fade by mid-afternoon, but cold doesn’t bother me as much as it does ordinary people, and I needed to breathe something other than air-conditioning, especially ours, which was getting a bit strained. Halyna was a smoker, and she had discovered a couple of cartons that Caz had left behind in one of the closets. I tried to get her to go outside when possible, but as an ex-smoker myself I didn’t have the heart to send her into cold rain or fifty-mile-an-hour winds, so the apartment was beginning to smell a bit.

  As I sat thinking, I realized my heart still felt like it was beating faster than normal. Confronting Anaita had really rattled me, because now I’d taken a decisive step that couldn’t be undone. Once she realized there was no blackmail, it was going to be war. I had basically told her, You want to get me, I want to get you. Gloves off. Let’s settle this thing like grown-ups. But the difference in power between us made it a bit nearer to a six-year-old kicking a Sumo wrestler in the knee. A Sumo with a bad hangover and anger issues.

  Honest, I really don’t do these things simply because I’m an impatient fool. I mean, that contributes, but my old boss Leo taught me better than that in my Counterstrike days. There often comes a point when all the clever plans aren’t enough to get you what you need, so you have to shake the trees instead and see what falls on you. Sometimes it’s a coconut and instead of starving, you get to eat. Other times it’s a leopard, and . . . well, at least then you know where the leopards are. They’re all over your ass.

  And I had learned things today, some of them pretty damned important. For one, I now knew that I was right: Anaita was the one behind the Third Way, and so she was also almost certainly guilty of sending Smyler after me, as well as transferring poor Walter to Hell. How did I know that? Well, I can promise you that if there hadn’t been something fishy going on, the Angel of Moisture wouldn’t have spent half an hour exchanging coded doubletalk and subtle but unmistakable threats. If she had been innocent, the moment she’d recognized me she would have said, “You’re Doloriel. What are you doing here, bothering me during my free time?” But she didn’t, and in fact she’d made more than one reference to blackmail. Angels, especially the old ones, don’t just say things by accident. By not immediately calling me out, she had as much as admitted she had something to hide.

  The next thought hit me hard, although it was the reason I was sitting in a pretty apartment garden right then instead of being dragged through the streets of Heaven in disgrace. Not only was Anaita admitting she had something to hide, she was afraid of me. Me, the angelic equivalent of the guy who mopped her floors. She didn’t know what I knew or who I’d talked to, didn’t know what kind of allies I had, who might be backing my play. In fact, the boldness (yes, some might call it idiocy) of my walking right into her home had worried her badly. Because why would any sane angel dare to anger one of the Powers and Principalities right in her own house?

  Just because me, was the real reason, of course. And Anaita knew me and my history at least well enough to guess that might be the case. But she couldn’t be certain, which was probably all that was keeping me alive and relatively comfortable in my fleshly shell.

  Was there some way I could bring in bigger artillery on my side? I couldn’t believe all four of the other ephors were in on this with her, Karael and Terentia and the rest. But I didn’t know the territory well enough, didn’t know what was going on among my superiors—heck, I didn’t know if I could trust my own archangel, Temuel, even though he’d helped me several times. I wondered if another talk with Karl Gustibus might be useful.

  As I sat and watched birds hopping across the cement paving stones looking for seeds, performing their due diligence before winter came for real and fucked everything up for them, I felt a surge of resolve. The only good alternatives for me required me to neutralize Anaita somehow, once and for all, so there was no point in letting the scary magnitude of what I’d gotten into affect me too badly. I had been heading in this direction for most of a year. Yes, I’d shut a door behind me today, but I had already been long past the point when I could have turned around and gone back.

  • • •

  One good thing that had come out of the trip to Donya Sepanta’s sprawling estate was that I’d seen the Amazons in action, at least the low-level kind, and they were good soldiers. No nonsense, no second-guessing, and they had both done what they were supposed to. That was important, because now that I had officially put Anaita on notice, I could feel trouble coming like a sailor feels a storm.

  I had some errands to run, and Oxana was trying to get her new pictures downloaded onto Caz’s computer, so I invited Halyna to drive downtown with me.

  “Where do we go?” she asked as we headed north on Middlefield, past shops and chic restaurants and a few crazy-expensive houses now subdivided into merely expensive apartments.

  “To get some new phones.”

  “But you have a really good phone!”

  “Yes, and it’s been tapped by so many different people they have to take a number and wait in line to eavesdrop. I’m not going to war with compromised communications.” She looked at me, confused. “I don’t trust my phone anymore,” I explained. “My bosses gave it to me. I don’t trust them, ei
ther.”

  “But is your boss not God?” Halyna asked, intrigued.

  “Supposed to be, but there’s quite a few levels of middle management between me and the perfection that is the Highest.” I shrugged. “Who’s your boss? Back home, I mean. In Amazon Land.”

  She scowled, but not too seriously. “It is not called that.”

  “But seriously, who runs the place? You said it was some politician.”

  “She once was a politician. Now, she is only the leader of Scythians. Valentyna Voitenko is her name. A very strong, smart woman.”

  “I’ll bet. What about you, Halyna? How did you get involved with the Scythians?”

  Now it was the redhead’s turn to shrug. “It’s not interesting, very much.”

  “Tell me anyway, if you don’t mind. It’s still a ways to Cubby’s place.”

  “What is Cubby’s Place?”

  “It’s a who, not a what. Cubby Spinks is the lady I get my phones from—her and her husband. You’ll meet them. But I’d still like to hear how you wound up in a mountain camp training to kill Persian goddesses.”

  She made a face. “Much more than that. Scythia—it is a way of life, you understand? Like a religion, but a religion of women. Not a God-religion. It is about living the right way, the way that women were once living in the old days.”

  I nodded. “And how did you find out about it? Was your family involved?”

  Halyna snorted. “Them? They are useless. I get nothing from them, just watching television, and they tell me not to make trouble.” She was struggling with her English a little, as if returned to a younger state. “New government comes in, everything is money, money, money. My family just wants some of the money.” She paused, choosing her words. “Me, I am just . . . ordinary girl. No politics, nothing like that. I have girlfriends, even one or two boyfriends. I drink, I fuck. I smoke hashish. But then I run away one day, and the Scythians, my sisters, take me in. They teach me. Valentyna shows me what life it really means. Valentyna gives me understanding, gives me reasons.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Where is my father now? I don’t know. Where is my mother? I don’t care. I have my family now. I have a family.”