Night had fallen, and for once it wasn't a problem for me. Here in my cozy, stark little corner of the monochromatic world, I could only really tell that Old Night was in full sway because of the moon in the sky rather than the sun.
Mort, Ramirez, Thomas, Will and the Alphas had piled into Will and Georgia's massive SUV and made for the Carpenters'. Being incorporeal 'n all, I'd walked, which I'd discovered to amount to more or less the same speed of their Star Destroyer of a car. Interesting. Anyway, we'd made it to Michael's home (it's not a house, it's a home, believe you me). The Star Destroyer pulled up behind Charity's van and my friends piled out.
I walked over to Mort, duster billowing slightly behind me from a breeze I couldn't feel, and lifted a hand to his shoulder to speak to him.
Another hand fell gently upon my own shoulder first, causing me to jump, shout a cuss (not curse) word and turn around to see who it was.
It was an Archangel. The Archangel, actually – Uriel. He was once again in the guise of an elderly black man, and to my surprise he was full-colour. I rubbernecked to see that my friends had gone inside, so I shrugged and returned my attention to him. I decided that I could afford to be a little less respectful than usual, given the circumstances of our meeting.
"What do you want? I'm a little busy."
He chuckled and said, "An early retirement. But this isn't about me, Harry – it's about you. And the subject at hand is a little more dire than just what you want."
"I don't know about that," I replied, "my wants have always taken a pretty high spot on my priorities list."
Uriel rolled his eyes and said, "Higher than your needs?"
I cringed and answered him, "No, not quite. What are you getting at? Shouldn't you be leading some Boy Scouts into the desert for forty years or something?"
"That's my weekend job. For someone who got so lucky in life, you sure aren't performing so well as a soul."
I blinked. "Wait. What?"
"A soul, Harry." Uriel sighed deeply and wrung his hands, an oddly human gesture. "You. Are. A. Soul. Not a spirit, not a ghost – just one more lost soul wandering the windswept world."
"How poetic. What's the difference?"
"As a soul, you've got access to things those beings I just mentioned don't – and as the soul of a wizard, you can do things that others can't."
"Like juju?" I was hopeful for the first time since… well, I'm not sure since when. Hell's Bells, what's wrong with me?
He shook his head. "Not that juju. Think more along the lines of what you are. What I am. What we both can do."
I licked my lips, an old habit, and thought hard on that. As an Archangel, Uriel had more pure energy, chi, mana, what have you, than I would ever be likely to acquire as a mortal. As a being, he was literally made of power of a sort – Soulfire. Think like the Energizer Bunny, but with the ability to bring civilizations to their knees through plague and death rather than banging on a little drum for all of eternity. Yeah. That was Uriel. Fear the quiet ones, indeed.
And as a soul, not a ghost, that was sort of what I was, as well. A being of Soulfire, the power of Creation and the polar opposite of what power the Fallen abused.
I lifted a hand up to about chest level, palm facing the sky, and created a little ball of sunlight into my hand.
I stood there in shock for about a minute, until I noticed that Uriel was staring slack-jawed at me. "Did that really never occur to you?"
"Would you be disappointed if I said yes?"
He shrugged the snark off like a dog would throw off water and replied, "Regardless. It's good that you've had this little epiphany. Maybe now it'll come to you that you've got a deadline."
"Yeah, really," I said. I paused in thought, then continued, "um."
"How eloquent." Interruptive jerk.
"Right. Can I do… anything else? Obviously conventional juju is out of the question, but what about…" I struggled over the question, unsure of what to ask.
"Your Sight?" Uriel shrugged again, a little deeper this time. "I'm not sure that I can tell you that or not. I may be stepping outside of my bounds by revealing your own limits to you.
"As for that," he pointed a finger at the ball of sunshine, still flickering in my hand, "you may be needing to use it here shortly. Maybe not. The choice is yours." He smiled fondly, and then he was gone.
I grit my teeth and extinguished the ball of sunshine. We'd gotten lucky with Chauncy, back at Mort's – he hadn't expected the numbers or abilities of who all had been there, ending his shot at gobbling up my soul. But he was more of an accountant than anything; the real baddies would be coming out of the woodwork now that night had fallen. I took some solace in that I could use Soulfire, but that hope was quashed pretty thoroughly when I remembered that overusing it would take away any hope of returning to life.
It had to be a Monday, didn't it?
