Immortal City

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Last call,” the man said, wiping dry another pint glass from behind the bar.

A solitary figure sitting at the bar in an overcoat nodded. Dust hung heavy in the dark air. The bartender picked up a broom and began sweeping.

Sylvester slowly twirled the remaining sliver of ice in the glass of whiskey he’d been nursing for the past thirty minutes. The dark bar was almost empty. It had been an Angel City institution for decades, with its dark wood, deep maroon-colored booths, and battered stools. Archangels had sat in those booths in years past, wheeling and dealing, and framed pictures of famous Guardians who used to be regulars in the forties and fifties hung dusty above the mirror of the bar.

The detective hadn’t been there in years. But he’d needed to think. The encounter with Mark had left him unsettled. Was the Archangel hiding something? Or someone? Sylvester’s mind struggled to put the pieces together. In bringing up Sylvester’s punishment, his expulsion from the Angels, Mark had hit a nerve the detective had long since tried to bury. Sometimes he swore he could still feel his wings. Phantom limbs. Better not to dwell on these things. Think of the case at hand, not time long passed, he told himself.

It was going to rain. Sylvester felt it in his back. Pressure was in the air.

Why would someone — or maybe some thing—be taking justice on these Angels? What had Godson or Templeton done, or was the reason for the murders just the order of their stars? Did the HDF have the know-how to recruit an unhappy Angel to their side? There had to be a part he was missing. Sylvester turned the facts over and over in his mind. Troublingly, his thoughts kept moving to the Archangels themselves. Could the Archangels somehow be cleaning out enemies from within the ranks, and if so, would Mark even be aware of it? It could go all the way to the Council. The more he thought about it, the more he began to question Mark’s motives. He’d seemed evasive, and not too surprised when he was told his stepson’s star was next. The detective’s head swirled with possibilities, leads, dead ends. A file ten inches thick was waiting for him on the passenger seat of his cruiser. A peek into the dank underbelly of the Immortal City.

He tipped back the glass and took another sip of his drink. The detective was woozy, but not from the booze. He needed some sleep.

The TV above the bar was tuned to a news channel, but of course they were talking about Angels. A group of talking heads was on a debate-type show. On-screen was the graphic Angels: Whose Side Are They On?

“Can you turn that up?” Sylvester asked, motioning to the TV.

The bartender picked up the remote, bumping the volume up a few notches. “You want the check too?” he asked, hopefully. The handful of final other customers was clearing out. Sylvester nodded.

A man with a goatee and glasses was speaking to the two other experts on the show: “So what you have here, what you have is total uncooperation on the part of the Angels, Teri. We have no idea how these guys work. They just show up and do a save for the right price. There’s no transparency, no accountability—”

“But the fact is they’re saving lives, Will. Pure and simple. Do the math,” Teri, a woman in a power suit with short-cropped brown hair, interrupted the goateed man.

“I’ve done the math, Teri, and the fact is that the Angels only save a few, while the vast majority of humanity is left out in the cold,” Will responded, his face getting slightly red. “And now with these confirmed Angel deaths happening in what’s being called serial killer murders, which we’ve learned about just minutes ago, and the media hysteria that will certainly come from them, we have absolutely no idea what’s going on. The Angels are acting as if everything is just business as usual.”

Sylvester sat up straight. The murders had gone public. The Angels couldn’t keep everyone in the dark forever.

The story was too explosive.

None of the handful of other customers in the bar seemed to pay much mind. They went there at that hour to try to escape the Immortal City’s woes, not pay attention to them.

The debate continued on the television:

“Okay, okay, let’s bring it back to the original—” The moderator attempted to steer the conversation but was interrupted by an irate Teri.

“If we’re going back to the original question: they can’t save everyone all the time, pure and simple,” Teri said.

“There’s just not enough for humanity. This vocal anti-Angel minority in this country is not useful and will solve nothing. We have to accept the Angels as they are, on their terms. Think of how many lives they’ve saved! To do otherwise is to give ammunition to hate groups like the Humanity Defense Front, whose stated goal is the extermination of Angels by any means possible!”

The third guest, a man with a buzz cut and a red tie, spoke up. “How do we know they’re not capable of saving everyone? And at what cost do we have them save us? And then we have to owe these creatures that just materialized from thin air over a hundred years ago? They know everything about us, but they still won’t bring humans into a Guardian training facility except for special staged press events.” An on-screen title identified him as former army colonel Davis A. Jessup. “What’s really going on over at the NAS? And why has the Council of Twelve all but disappeared from the public eye for the past eighty years?

Certainly all of these questions are important from a nation-al security standpoint too.” The colonel paused. “I think soon-to-be senator Ted Linden’s recent victory at the polls has shown that a large part of this country wants these answers. Now.”

Taking a pull from his glass, Sylvester continued peering up at the television. If the public knew everything. . he thought. On-screen they cut to file footage of Ted Linden at his victory speech. He was maybe forty-five years old and handsome, a sleek shock of dark lustrous hair swooped back on his head. He had a winning smile as a he gave a thumbs-up to his supporters.

“What should we think now that Angels are being killed? And scientists also have evidence that the Angels are actually aging faster than we thought,” Will stated. “Latest projections have the life spans of these so-called Born Immortals at four hundred to five hundred years. But the NAS maintains total immortality. If the aging is really happening, and these killings are really happening, apparently from within the community, what else are they hiding?”

Teri almost jumped out of her seat. “I’ve seen that report, Will, and I wouldn’t call it ‘evidence’ as much as total speculation! Anti-Angel elements are just trying for a power play in this country, but it’s not going to work. Whipping people into a false frenzy never lasts. It’s clear you’re just a mouthpiece for Linden and his party.”

Sylvester tilted his glass back and took the final gulp of whiskey, laying down the empty glass and a few bills on the bar.

“Thanks,” he said to the bartender, pulling on his jacket as he walked to the door. Stepping onto the dormant streets of Angel City, he took in a lungful of night air. The stars high above twinkled dimly in the sky through the light clouds and pollution.

As soon as the door closed, the bartender walked to the window and turned off the neon signs, also flipping the Open sign to Closed. After bolting the door, he walked back to the bar, under the rows of dusty old Angel photos on the wall. He picked up the remote. Will, Teri, and Colonel Jessup were now near screaming at each other on-screen. He pressed the red power button and the TV switched to blackness, leaving the bar in silence as he continued sweeping under the dusty, watchful eyes of glamorous Angels past.