Three

  San Francisco has a certain timeless quality about it that I’ve always loved. It had been over fifty years since I’d been there last, yet aside from many of the shops having changed their names, Pier 39 looked just like it always had. To my great relief, the Hard Rock Cafe was still there, front and center at the entrance. I had arrived early just to make sure I had time to grab a burger – in case Raquel wasn’t into such things. The food was still only passable, but the vibes were as awesome as ever, even if the music had changed. These days, it seemed that off-key riffs mixed with tribal beats were becoming more mainstream. It was strange listening at first, but quickly grew on me. I found myself humming one particular tune as I left the restaurant a few minutes before the scheduled meeting time. I strolled across the wide walking path to a drink stand and ordered myself a smoothie, waving my smart band over the payment terminal and adding a generous tip.

  I smiled at the barista as I took my drink and sat on a nearby bench to wait. I only had time for a few sips of the orange, mango, and wheatgrass concoction before I saw Raquel coming towards me from the direction of the main ferry terminal, which also seemed like it would never be going anywhere. Angels have a certain aura about us that we can suppress to the point that it’s undetectable by humans, but other angels will instantly recognize it. So, even though I had never seen Raquel before, I immediately knew it was her – and given how she was walking straight at me, the reverse could be said for her. She was wearing a sleek and stylish woman’s business suit with large lapels and no tie. I could see her badge peeking out from beneath her jacket. Her hair was pulled back, and dark sunglasses hid her eyes. I had opted for the more casual secret agent look myself – faded jeans and a t-shirt with a flannel overshirt on top, unbuttoned, and some sporty sunglasses of my own, of course. I had always worn them in the past, and whenever I was using a human form, I made sure to have some handy.

  “Raphael,” she said, shaking my hand as she reached me. “I’m glad to finally meet you. I’ve heard of the good work you do.”

  “My team does most of it, to be honest,” I replied. “I just point those who need help in the right direction.”

  “Well, I’m glad you and your team are out there. I often see firsthand just how much pain and suffering injustice causes in the world.”

  I nodded my acknowledgment, and a slightly awkward silence fell between us. After a few moments, I gestured at the drink stand nearby. “Want a smoothie? They’re not bad here.” I held mine up as proof.

  She smiled but shook her head. “No thanks. I’m not a fan. But if you offer me a good cup of coffee, I’ll bite any time.”

  “You can still get some?” I asked, surprised. “I thought the industry collapsed after the war in Panama.”

  “It’s ridiculously expensive now, but you can still get it if you know the right people, which I do. Being FBI does have its perks, you know.”

  “Well, it's my first day on the job, so I’ll have to take your word for it.” I took another sip of my smoothie as Raquel and I began walking back the way she had come. It was mid-afternoon on Wednesday, and the crowds were relatively light. “Sariel briefed you on my mission?” I asked.

  “He did,” Raquel nodded. “Hey, Zerie, fetch my car,” she said. It took me a few moments to realize she was giving a command to her smart band.

  “Cars come to you now?”

  “They have been for about twenty years. I thought you spent a lot of time on Earth.”

  “I do, sort of,” I admitted. “These days I spend most of my time doing administrative work or counseling people post-mortem. I don’t pay much attention to technology unless it directly impacts my patients, like neural drugs. When I come to Earth, it’s usually in less developed countries or remote areas, and those are only quick visits to schools, hospitals, care facilities, or the like. My team handles the bigger cities and the long-term jobs. I’m too busy to spend months at a time on one patient, no matter how much I’d like to.”

  Raquel nodded and gestured at the silicon rubber bracelet around my wrist. “At least you got yourself a smart band, so you won’t look too out of place.” She held up her wrist, showing an expensive-looking silver bracelet. “You went with a sports model, huh?”

  I shrugged. “I used to be a lumberjack. We tend to favor rugged and functional stuff. Fancy things don’t stay fancy long in that line of work.”

  She chuckled and stepped aside to let a few people squeeze past. “That explains your choice of outfit.”

  I glanced at my shirt and jeans. “What’s wrong with this? Don’t tell me no one wears flannel anymore.”

  “We’re in San Francisco. No one’s going to care what you wear,” she said with a slight grin, not exactly answering my question. I studied the people around us to see what they were wearing, suddenly very self-conscious. I sighed with relief when I spotted at least two other people dressed in similar outfits.

  “So what about you?” I asked. “Sariel said you were a cop once?”

  “Still am,” she said as we passed a large Ferris Wheel near the ferry terminal. “Went through the whole process.” She lifted the hem of her jacket, showcasing her badge. “This baby’s one hundred percent legit.”

  I whistled, impressed. “You’re in that deep, huh?”

  “Makes the job easier when we don’t have to mess with reality as much. But don’t worry,” she added quickly. “Your credentials will pass scrutiny. As far as anyone on Earth is concerned, you’re legit, too.” She paused for a second and looked at me with a smile. “I have to admit, it’s nice to be able to talk freely with another angel. I’m usually running solo and only report to Sariel on occasion.”

  “How’d you get your wings, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “It’s fine,” she said with a dismissive wave and started walking again. We were getting closer to the big parking lot near the old bakery. “I was a cop, like you said. Most of the details of my life are pretty fuzzy, as I’m sure yours are too, but I remember the big moment pretty clearly. It was 2035 or somewhere close to that. We had just responded to a domestic violence call and apprehended this guy for beating his girlfriend. We had him cuffed and sitting on the curb outside the apartment. I was keeping an eye on him while my partner took the victim’s statements when I heard a car engine revving hard. I barely managed to look up in time to see a fancy, suped-up SUV coming down the street with its windows down. My instincts kicked in, and I knew we were in for some violence. I didn’t have time to draw my service pistol – it wouldn’t have done much good against that thing anyway – but I threw myself in front of the suspect, hoping my body armor would be enough to protect us both. It protected him just fine. Me? Not so much.”

  “You died protecting a guy who’d just been beating up a woman?” I asked, genuinely impressed.

  “He was helpless at the time,” she said with a shrug. “And it was because we had him in custody. At that moment his safety was my responsibility. What else could I do?” We reached the parking lot and she stopped, looking at me. “Ok. I told you mine, you tell me yours. How’d you die?”

  “The first time or the second?” I asked.

  “What?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.

  I chuckled. “Never mind. It's a bit of a long story and not as heroic as yours, I’m afraid. I was a lumberjack and got hit by a falling tree because I made a stupid mistake.”

  “So how’d you get your wings then?”

  “Turned out that wasn’t enough to kill me, though at the time I sure thought it had. I wound up in the Soul Divide. That’s where I really died, when my soul’s connection got severed in a fight with the demon lord Nergal. I was protecting my sister who was doing battle with him while trying to save me.”

  “She’s the one you’re trying to rescue, right? They say she’s called the Angel of Destruction over there. Supposed to be a pretty hard-core enforcer for Aamon.”

  “Not by choice,” I said, rather harshly.

  “I know,” Raquel said, holding up her hands. “I know. Sariel told me. She’s his slave. Probably bound by a contract or something. It’s not the first time something like that has happened. Though it’s the first time it's happened to an angel. What you’re doing is a good thing, rescuing her.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, forcing myself to calm down. “I get a little riled up thinking about it.”

  “It’s ok. I would, too. So let’s go do something about it, huh?” A black, mid-sized sedan pulled up to the curb we were standing at, and Raquel opened the passenger door, gesturing for me to get in. “What hotel are you staying at?”

  “The Fairmont on Ghirardelli Square,” I said. “I already checked in, so I’m ready to get to work.”

  Raquel raised an eyebrow. “Fancy accommodations for someone on a federal salary.”

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  “My boss has deep pockets,” I replied with a grin. “What can I say?” Raquel rolled her eyes and shut the door for me before walking around and getting into the driver’s seat. “So, where we heading?” I asked, looking for the seat belt, which wasn’t where I expected it to be. The entire interior was minimalist, with smooth, white walls and dashboards. I didn’t even see a steering wheel.

  “Everything’s automatic these days,” Raquel explained, watching me with amusement. “You need to get out more if you’re going to keep doing fieldwork.”

  “I like my desk job, thank you,” I said. “I don’t plan on making this a regular thing.”

  “Well,” she said as the car began silently rolling forward, “Hestes has dropped off our radar again, unfortunately. I’ve spent the last few days trying to track him down with no luck. I’ve got the tech guys scouring the web, looking for any signs of him, but they haven’t turned anything up.” The car left the parking lot and merged onto the Embarcadero, heading towards downtown.

  “So that means he’s smart enough to not be writing these drug programs in his home office, then?”

  Nicole nodded. “Or leave enough evidence lying around for us to arrest him. There’s nothing illegal about a fully grown man disappearing for a few days every once in a while, and that’s the only fishy behavior he exhibits. We even managed to get a search warrant once, but it turned up nothing. Now he’s on alert, and the judges are getting tired of our ‘witch hunt,’ as they call it. He may be a coward, but he’s still an archdemon. He’s good at what he does. Very good.”

  “What about a… uh… digital footprint, or whatever they call it? Can’t you track his computers? Even if he moves around a lot, when he fires them up, you can ping his location. That’s a thing, right?”

  “It used to be, but that rarely works anymore. VPN and firewall technology have gotten so advanced these days that almost anyone can become untraceable with just a little effort, and Hestes – he’s on a whole other level. We still can’t figure out how he’s distributing his product. We just know that every time he disappears, it coincides with an increase in neural OD cases. It’s the only reason the investigation hasn’t been shut down, honestly.”

  “Well,” I said. “I’m at your disposal. What can an out-of-touch old relic like me do to help?”

  “Hestes has been off-grid for about three days now,” Raquel said, tapping a button on the dashboard. A slot opened up, and a thin screen slid out, unfolding in front of us and displaying a map of the city. She brought up a section of downtown with a large park in the center. “I make my rounds pretty regularly here,” she said, tapping the screen. “It's a popular spot for transients, runaways, drop-outs, and the like. It’s got good reception for the mobile neural network, too, so a lot of people hang out there, using the bandwidth instead of their home or office networks, especially if they’re visiting illegal sites.”

  “You’re hoping that if we can find someone who’s using neural stimulants, we can learn where they got them from and backtrack them to Hestes?”

  “It’s a long shot, but I’ve had hits come from less. It’s a good place to start, at least. And who knows? With your experience and fresh eyes, you may spot something I miss.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” I said, leaning back in my seat and slurping up the last few drops of my smoothie.

  “So this is detective work, huh?” I asked as I climbed back into the car, holding a bag containing a few warm churros from a nearby street vendor in one hand and my third smoothie of the afternoon in the other. Raquel had stepped out about an hour earlier and returned with a steaming cup of coffee for herself, which she had been nursing ever since. When I asked how much it cost she wouldn’t answer.

  “Sometimes,” Raquel said, grabbing a churro out of the bag when I offered it to her. “Days, weeks, or even months of boredom and paperwork, culminating in a few minutes of excitement and sheer terror.” She eyed the smoothie. “You might want to think about laying off those things. Don’t forget, you’ve got a human body right now.”

  “Yeah, I know. They’re just so good.” We’d been staking out the park for three hours by that point, and the most exciting thing that had happened was a few urgent trips to the (very disgusting) bathroom. I watched through the sedan’s tinted windows as the park’s residents milled about, sharing cigarettes, talking, or setting up their sleeping spots for the night while Raquel tapped away on her laptop beside me. “You know everyone knows what we’re doing here, right?” I asked, breaking the silence as a few shaggy transients walked past, eying the car suspiciously.

  “Even if we dressed up like them and shambled about exactly the way they do, they’d still peg us for cops almost immediately, so we stopped trying. I don’t bust people for minor stuff, so they mostly tolerate my presence. There’s no law against using neural drugs anyway. It’s only illegal to make or distribute them.”

  “That just blows my mind,” I said, taking a bite of my churro and trying not to let the crumbs get all over the place.

  “We don’t make the rules, only enforce them,” Raquel said, closing her computer and taking a few bites of her churro. We sat in silence for a while longer as the sun began to set outside. After a time, Raquel nudged me in the side. It seemed I had begun to doze. “What do you make of that?” she asked, pointing off to the distance.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked where she was pointing. Across the park, I saw some dark shapes circling in the sky near an office building. “Imps?” I asked, squinting. My human eyes didn’t see as well in the dark as my celestial ones could.

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. The people don’t seem to see them. See how they’re walking right by? Someone would take notice of a bunch of imps flying around.”

  I squinted harder, then groaned when I finally recognized the shapes. “Wraiths,” I grumbled. As I watched, a few of them disengaged from the others and swooped down, out of my field of view, before returning to the swarm. “But what are they doing?”

  “I don’t know, but it's never good when they show up. And I can’t remember ever seeing so many at once. Let’s check it out. You got a ranged weapon besides your service pistol? It won’t be any use against these things.”

  “I’ve got my bow. And I’m a decent enough shot.”

  “Good, have it ready.” She opened the door and grinned at me. “Looks like you won’t have to wait weeks to see some action after all.”

  “Fantastic,” I said, rolling my eyes and making myself invisible as Raquel and I stepped out of the car. She did the same.

  “Have you ever dealt with wraiths before?” Raquel asked as we started walking, already unfurling our wings.

  “Occasionally. Not like this, though. Usually, by the time my team or I need to get involved, the wraith is dug in like a tick. They’re a real pain to get out.”

  Raquel shivered. “Ugh.”

  “Yeah. They’re nasty buggers,” I agreed. “I wonder what’s got these all riled up.” I watched as a few more swooped down and back up. “How do you want to handle this?” I asked, pausing near the edge of the park. The offices were just across the street, and the wraiths were swarming above an alley between the buildings. Even though the sun was nearly fully set by this point, there were still a lot of pedestrians about.

  Raquel thought for a few moments. “How good are you with that bow?”

  “I can shoot the fleas off a dog's back at a hundred yards,” I said, quoting one of my favorite childhood movies. “Though Gabriel can do it at a hundred and fifty.”

  “Not bad,” she said, missing the reference. She surveyed the surrounding buildings, then pointed to one that was a bit taller than the others and not too far away. “Why don’t you cover me from up there? I’ll suit up and engage them with my whip. It’s all I have besides my sword. Hopefully, we’ll just have to take a few out before the others scatter.” She sighed. “I’ll probably be spending the next week buffing out the scratches in my armor. These things have wicked sharp teeth.”

  Wraiths feed off the spiritual essence of humans, much like leeches and ticks feed off the blood of others. The victims don’t feel it, of course, but they do feel the effects. It leaves them feeling drained and empty, often coming across as depression or a sense of constant lethargy. I had an entire team set aside solely to excise them. I donned my armor with a thought, leaving off my shield and helmet for the moment. If things got bad enough for me to need those, then we’d be in real trouble. “Let’s get to it,” I said, spreading my wings and lifting a few feet off the ground.

  “Right,” Raquel said, putting on her armor in an instant. It was golden and heavily plated, like Nicole’s, whereas mine was blue-tinted and of a lighter, more flexible design. In my youth, I had been a real firebrand, getting into fights constantly, but all that changed after the events in the Soul Divide. Now, I generally try to avoid conflict and prefer to act as support, healing, or providing backup from a distance. I flew to the roof of the building Raquel had indicated while she went to meet with the wraiths circling above the alley, hanging back until I was in position.

  As I landed and summoned my bow, she closed in on the wraiths, which were so focused on whatever they were circling down below that they hadn’t noticed her yet. With a brilliant flash, she struck out with her fiery whip, and one wraith dissolved into dusty nothingness. That got their attention, and they immediately shifted their focus onto her, which was what we wanted. The wraiths flew at her in a fury, and I began firing with my bow, the arrows leaving blue streaks in the sky as they flew. New arrows appeared on the string after I let each one fly, letting me fire at a constant rate.

  My first arrow streaked past Raquel’s right ear with only inches to spare and struck a wraith that was flying directly at her. It hit the ghostly creature square between the eyes, and it burst into dust. Raquel turned and saluted me with a smile as two more arrows flew past, also finding their marks and making little clouds of dust that used to be wraiths. She turned back and swung her whip about, leaving a fiery trail behind it and forcing the wraiths to keep their distance, giving my arrows easy targets. Five more fell before the swarm gave up and broke, wraiths flying off in every direction.

  “You weren’t kidding about being a decent shot,” Raquel said as I joined her in the air, watching the wraiths disappear into the distance. “That was a LOT easier than usual.”

  “Guess you won’t be polishing your armor all week after all,” I said with a grin.

  “I’ll try to contain my disappointment,” she said, dismissing her whip but keeping her armor on. I did the same with my bow. “Let’s go see what had them all riled up, huh?” We flew down and landed in the dark alley. Cardboard boxes and garbage littered the ground, and trash bins lined the edges, rubbish piled up around them. It looked like a perfectly ordinary alleyway, and I could see nothing immediately apparent that would interest a wraith — much less an entire swarm of them. “See anything?” Raquel asked, also looking around.

  I shook my head, squinting in the dark. I had my celestial eyes now, but it was still hard to make out anything in the shadows. A rustle of movement near one of the bins caught my attention, and I had my bow out in an instant. Raquel wheeled around, whip in hand as well. A wraith was digging at the bin, head down, struggling to get at something buried in the rubbish. Raquel was closer than I was, and she lashed out with her whip, wrapping it around the wraith. She tugged hard, and the whip closed tight around the demon, cutting it clean in half. As the two halves crumbled to dust, she moved in to see what the wraith had been trying so hard to get while I kept an eye out for any more stragglers. She gasped. “What is it?” I asked, trying to keep an eye on our surroundings.

  “A little boy… I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Just come take a look,” she said.

  I turned away from watching the alley and stepped over to the bin. There, curled up into a ball and covering its head, was what appeared to be a little boy. But he was translucent like a fading soul, and all the color had been washed away, leaving him grey and indistinct, with a bit of a blue haze around his fuzzy edges. “A ghost?” I asked, shocked.

  “I knew it was possible,” Raquel said. “But I’ve never seen one before.”

  As we stared, the little ghost uncurled from the ball he’d been in and looked up at us with wide, fearful eyes. “Please, help me,” he said and began to cry.

  End of Chapter Three