Ch.11 Athena's Gift

Chapter 11

For certain is death for the born
And certain is birth for the dead
Therefore over the inevitable
Thou shouldst not grieve
-Bhagavad-Gita

A little perspective, gained from a decent nights sleep, made our discussions from the previous night look like Amateur Hour. The more I thought about it, the more I really didn’t feel up to the challenge. Who was I to think that Angels could use my help anyway?

I got up, brewed some tea and took a shower. I put on a plain black t-shirt and an old pair of snow camouflage pants. The pants had holes and grease spots on them, but they were comfortable. I hoped I didn’t look like a crazed militant.

Jill and Suzanne must have smelled the tea because they joined me shortly after I got dressed. We enjoyed the luxury of having other women around to do something with our hair, ending up with three reddish brown versions of French braiding.

At around 10:30 Jeff knocked on our door. He had bagels and butter, which we plowed through ravenously.

After he left us last night, he went back to the seminary and started asking around about the Angel bar and Demon issues. People within the church seemed reluctant to discuss any of it, as if they were embarrassed. But, he did have a good lead on a nightclub where a certain drug could be purchased. He suggested we start there by just observing tonight.

“That’s all well and good.” I said, “but what about Jill and Suzanne? They still need to get to Michigan, now more than ever. They didn’t sign on for this.”

“I haven’t forgotten about that. Lets get the ham radios out today and start broadcasting about this drug and find out if anyone from Michigan is listening. Maybe we should also mention something about the Hashmallim and Demons, but we need to put it in a way that we don’t sound like cranks.” Jeff answered, “I’ll check with some people from the church to find out about getting to Michigan, sometimes they send church vans out. Maybe you ladies can join one of those.”

“Oh. That’s great.” Jill said “We figured we would have to wait longer to move on once we got here.”

We pulled the radios out of our bags and got to work, starting with Charlie and my mom. They sounded great and the fledgling camp at the Grove was still going strong. Chris and the new Illiniwek camp was also doing well, in spite of a harrowing visit from the Hashmallim. It was good to hear his voice again.

When Jeff left for his meeting, we spent some time surfing around listening to other broadcasts. Some were pretty mundane but others sounded even crazier than ours.

Europe was experiencing issues with Valkyries snatching people up.

A giant serpent had leveled Melbourne Australia, remaking it into a landlocked bowl with mountains between it and the ocean.

In a small town in Bangladesh, a glowing woman was riding around on the back of a tiger, destroying everything in her path. Reports claim that extra arms occasionally sprouted from her back with weapons. The people in India were divided on the issue of the tiger woman, some were actually building shrines in praise of her outside their front doors.

I’m not sure how much of this I could believe. Probably, people were experiencing the same strange sort of happenings that we were right here in Illinois. I think people do have a tendency to assign something they are familiar with to things they can’t explain.

But, if these events were being accurately described for us- what would that mean? What if the God of the Western world wasn’t the only one not coming back for the end of times?
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Our hairdos kept getting bigger. We hadn’t reached the point of disturbance yet, but anyone could see where this hair dresser-itis was leading.

The ladies all opted for comfortable jeans, shoes we could run in and our dressiest tops. Suzanne had some impressive cleavage going on, so we would be letting her lead.

Needing to get weapons into the club discreetly meant that we had to leave the shotguns here. Jill chose a set of small throwing knives, they were the only weapons Suzanne and I couldn’t see on her spare frame when we stepped away. I had my nine as usual. It took some effort to talk Suzanne into leaving her 357 behind in favor of mace clipped to her waist. I felt sorry in advance for whoever pushed her over the edge someday.

There was a knock at the door and Jill got up to look through the peephole.

Oh My God…she mouthed at us silently as she opened the door to let Jeff in. I had to do a double take as he walked in wearing black fatigues and a black tank top. He was freshly shaven and the scratches and bruising from our trip in had faded.

I closed my mouth as he crossed the room to draw the blinds against the darkness outside. Suzanne cocked an eyebrow at me and I mouthed a Holy Cow at her. Had he always been this muscle-y? And he smelled good too.

“What?” he asked when he turned around and we still hadn’t said anything.

“Hm hmm, right, lets go, do we have everything?” the three of us answered trying to nonchalantly fill the silence. We tucked cash and ID’s in various pockets and decided against light jackets.

“What’s up with that hair?” he asked, “I thought we were trying to be inconspicuous?”

“Wait’ll you see The Girls.” I muttered just as Suzanne passed them in a turn under his nose. I waited as he tracked their progress with a surprised look. He let them pass without saying anything, probably deciding they had great powers of distraction that might be useful later.

Suzanne and Jeff walked mostly in front leaving Jill and I to look over our shoulders from time to time, watching behind us. We only had about a mile to walk to get to the club, but it was through a very seedy area. We passed hookers, pimps, homeless and addicts all along the way. I was thankful to be part of a group. Individuals would have made very easy targets out here.

Bass was bumping within the club and we could feel it outside on the sidewalk. There was no cover to get in and no line. Two substantial looking bouncers eyeballed us as we entered, eventually settling on Suzanne.

The place was essentially a large warehouse, loosely partitioned off into a bar area and dance floor area. We headed for a booth towards the back of the bar area, the last one available.

“I’m going to get us a pitcher of beer. Take a look around and count up who is here.” Jeff announced as he headed for the bar.

“Wait, I don’t like beer. Check on the wine.” Jill called after him.

He came back with beer.

I saw two tables with trench coats on the backs of the chairs. Everyone else seemed like normal people out for a night of fun. There were several groups of men periodically checking our table out, but clearly unsure of approaching with Jeff there.

“No wine?” Jill asked.

“We aren’t here to drink. The beer is just a prop.” Jeff informed us. “I was getting the eye from a woman around the corner from the bar, I’ll be back.”

Jeff disappeared from view. I wondered if we were supposed to be catching ‘the eye’ of any of the men hanging around.

“I say we just let Jeff do what he needs to do. I really don’t think we want to pick anybody up in here.” I put in.

“Yeah, I don’t want a date. But if someone wants to dance I’m going.” Jill said, looking around.

“Just don’t go off by yourself with anyone. I can’t tell who is demon touched and who isn’t.” I warned. That seemed to settle Jill down.

We all scanned the area and realized that a couple in a booth across from us looked familiar. It was the crackhead couple from last night. They appeared to recognize us as well, offering us a nod. But they continued their conversation, joined occasionally by other people.

“They look a lot better today. Not so twitchy.” I remarked. “They don’t seem to care about us at all.”

“Well, don’t stare.” Suzanne whispered loudly, “What are we supposed to do about it if they are selling this Angel drug anyway?”

“Nothing tonight. We are just supposed to observe.” I answered.

Jeff came back to the table about ten minutes later and poured himself a glass of beer. We were a little early. Once the place filled up, there would be more to see. The place had a good crowd already, about a hundred people. But more were coming in all the time.

We pointed out the crackhead couple to Jeff, who informed us that they were named Annabeth and Mikhail. I remembered the names from the Full Stein.

“Those two are sort of like dealers, except they don’t sell the drug directly. They look for humans who can be sucked into working for them. Then they help coordinate getting the drug from the supplier to the new customer when one is located. The humans get what they want and so does everybody else.” Jeff filled us in.

“So, who is their supplier?” I asked.

“Ultimately it is a Demon. But it gets filtered through demon touched.” Jeff responded. “We need to wait for those two Angels to make contact with their supplier. Then I am going to call Matthew at the Full Stein. He’ll send in the group that deals with errant Angels.”

I didn’t think I wanted to be around for that.