The Falling Star: Chapter 5, Part 2

Posted 12-07-17

Revised 02-08-21
 

An Angel From Hell story

Chapter 5, Part 2

By Christopher Leeson

Could it have been sheer luck or was it unasked-for help from heaven?  Whatever it was, Jezebel's fast driving wasn't interrupted by the falcons of the law between Brady and Kearney.  The Watcher was glancing to the dashboard clock every five minutes.  Time was short; she couldn't know for how long her most recent lust-recharge would last.  The second one had persisted longer than the first, but to play it safe, she needed to extract Holly from Monsatana's clutches in under two hours.

Jezebel had lost hours of travel around Brady, but, even at that, the time was barely past two in the morning.  Would the Satanists at Monsatana wait until sunup before moving Petosia Wittke to a company air strip?  She couldn't count on that, and so needed to assume the worst.  Already, in the back of her mind, she contemplated a possible trip out to Los Angeles.  The fallen angel couldn't accept failure; the price she might have to pay would be damnation.

The young woman made the turn-off at Exit 272 for Kearney, briefly stopping to top off her tank and to find a local map.  The filling station offered the latter at $3.95 and she bought one.  It showed the Monsatana Food Company situated off by itself, in an east-side industrial area.  Checking a city directory at the station desk, she found no listings of any other Monsatana properties nearby.  That narrowed down her known area of search. If the Cabalists didn't expect a rescue, they might opt to hold their captive inside the factory complex itself.  Still, the installation looked huge and blind searching would be neither quick nor easy.

Jezebel returned to her Toyota and turned to the heart of town. The city had only about 31,000 in population, and so reaching the canning factory was a matter of mere minutes.

The Monsatana complex looked like it had been laid out with prison architecture in mind.  The management didn't seem to want people either getting in or getting out unmonitored.  The Watcher parked her car along the adjacent service road, where it would be screened from view by a stand of catalpas.  With her stilettos stuffed into her bag to facilitate walking, the girl advanced toward the factory, using the available shadows for concealment.

The factory had guard towers and a fenced perimeter, and the latter displayed signs saying High Voltage.  That seemed excessive.  Only a well paid-off local government would not have become suspicious at seeing such security overkill at a commonplace cannery.  Be that as it may, the thought of going up against thousands of volts made Jezebel dubious.  Could her borrowed body shake off a heavy electrical shock, its current demonic power-charge notwithstanding?

As a child of Heaven, Jetrel had often turned invisible.  Jezebel tried to invoke that power of old beside her vehicle, but nothing happened.  How frustrating!  If the Father cared so much about protecting Pelosia Wittke, why had he denied her so many of the familiar abilities that would have made her a more effective rescuer?

A new thought made the angel brighten.  She stooped, concentrated, and touched the pavement.

Finally, a break!

Just at that moment, the Watcher heard a low roar, along with the distinctive hiss of heavy-duty brakes.  A truck was entering the parking area.  She took cover inside the black shadow cast by some electric transformer equipment.

As the slowing tractor-trailer passed her, Jezebel sprang after it.  She leaped upon its towing accessory and clung to the box's door latch.  The girl then pressed forward and, like a ghost, phased through the steel doors, falling into the interior the cargo compartment.  Reflexively, she restored her solidity in time to prevent herself from dropping through the floor.

Jezebel didn't need the dim light filtering in through the ventilation grates to observe her surroundings.  There was not much to see, except for an uninteresting cargo.  The vehicle came to a halt just then, and the angel heard voices up front.

A few short phrases were exchanged, presumably between the driver and the gatekeepers.  A couple minutes later, the truck revved its engine and rolled on.  Now that she had penetrated the security fence, the Watcher had no exact plan, except to get inside and look around.  Her idea was to grab some night-shift employee and question him about seeing a dark-haired girl, a real looker, arriving in a silver car near to midnight, accompanied by two Middle-Eastern sorts.

The truck slowed and stopped.  Jezebel heard metal doors sliding along tracks.  When they quieted, the forward roll resumed and, a minute later, the cab and its load stopped with a hiss of its hydraulic brakes.  The angel phased the upper part of her body through the metal wall and peered outside.  What she saw was certainly underwhelming -- a spacious warehouse filled with stacked pallets, forklifts, and other small industrial vehicles.

Jezebel, seeing no one, sprang through, striking the concrete floor with materialized feet, to scurry toward a lofty ridge of boxes.  This she phased through as a phantom, and came out abutting a cinder-block wall.

At the sound of conversation, the Watcher peered through a gap between the stacks.  She espied the parked truck with two security men beside it. The driver emerged and a few words more were spoken.  The trucker was then escorted away by one of the uniformed men.  The other guard, having been left with the keys, started to check out the vehicle, starting with the cab.  It did seem to the intruder that the management wanted no surprises coming in and were distrustful of even routine deliveries.

Jezebel waited until the guard had finished with the cab and had gone to the back of the truck, where he unlocked the doors and climbed up inside.

A moment later, hearing a sound, the security man turned abruptly.  He looked askance, seeing a young woman dressed just the way that he liked young women to dress.  He demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

“Thank heavens someone finally came in!”  Jezebel exclaimed.  “I've been locked in this warehouse for more than a half hour.  It's not all that warm, you know.”

“How did you get shut in?” the man asked uncertainly.  “Who let you through the gate?”

“He said his name was John.”  She smiled.  “It seems like half the guys I meet are named John.  You probably know him.  He's about your height and wears a fancy suit.”  She touched her head. “He has thinning hair.  He took me to an expensive club and bought me a lunch.”

“So, why are you here?”

“The guy, John, invited me back to his office.  He told me to wait in here while he checked is emails, but when he left he locked the doors.  Who'd do something like that?  Is this place run by a gang of sex fiends, like the Senate is?”

The security man frowned, not so much at the girl, but against the unfairness of life.  Money, luxury, women, the suits had all it all.  It was hard living surrounded by profligate prosperity without being able to touch it.  “I've got to take you to my supervisor.  He'll be able to hook you up with your boyfriend.”

Jezebel braced her fists against her hips.  “Some boyfriend!  I don't think I trust him.  I'm calling this off.  I want to go home.”

The guard shook his head.  “Nobody leaves Monsatana property until they're checked out.”  He walked past the girl and, from a sitting position, dropped to the warehouse floor.  Then he held out a hand.  “Come on, Miss, I'll help you down.”

“Do the Monsatana big shots bring a lot of girls into this place?” Jezebel asked.

“Never mind that.  Come here.”

The blonde came to the end of the box and sat down.  She let the man take her left arm, but when he put himself off guard, she swung a hard right-cross to his jaw.

The guard crashed to the concrete.  Jezebel sprang on top of him, subduing his struggles with another punch.  Then she dragged her victim behind one of the box stacks.

By dealing the man plentiful face slaps, the angel brought him around.  When he lay blinking at her feet, she affected a Russian accent and said, “I am here on orders from the FSB, which used to be KGB.”  The guard looked appropriately shocked, as she expected he would.  In the United States, the news was nothing but political propaganda.  For decades, the mainstream media had been controlled by the intelligence services, and those services currently wanted a war with Russia, just as the Cabalists had wanted, and gotten, war with Germany in the last century. 

The Fake News meisters did their job well, making the people believe in a counterfeit reality.  The fear-mongering was especially bad now, as Deep State needed to explain how their candidate could have lost the election.  They were blaming it on Russia, and trying to manufacture some connection between Russia and the newly-elected president.  It was no wonder that the guard looked alarmed. 

  Jezebel said, “The free, Christian people of the motherland know that Monsatana has been smuggling banned GMO shipments into Russia.  They are laden with nanites that makes the human body fat and sick.  If you deny the truth, you must be a conspirator, too.  Speak! I know you are not mute.”

“I—I never heard of that!”

She tossed her head and scornfully.  “Of course you have not; only lies are published in your employee bulletins!  But you have suspected such things, have you not?”

He blinked.  “Sometimes we hear things. T-They're poisoning Africa – that's for sure.  But I didn't hear about Russia.”

“Such is not important.  An FSB agent has been captured by Monsatana agents. Have you seen her? A very pretty brunette girl. We have traced her to this installation by GPS.  What do you know of such a captive?  She would have been brought through the gate tonight.”

“I didn't see anything!”

“Then you are useless and must die.”

“But –“ the prisoner quickly interjected, “but one of the gate guards said something.”

“What did he tell you, Americanski?”

“Two men came through.  They had a girl in the back.  They were treating her like a prisoner.”

“Did they appear to be Chinese, and was the car was red?” she demanded, testing him.

“No.  I was told they looked like Arabs.  The car was silver.”

Jezebel frowned.  “What did the girl look like?”

“Pretty.  Black hair.”

“Where do they take their prisoners?”

“To the executive office building.  If they go there, nNobody ever sees them again.”

“Where is this structure?”

When she had everything the man knew, Jezebel asked, “Do you have access?”

He shook his head.

“Who does?”

“The special security section."

“If I saw one of these, how would I know that he is special security?”

“A different uniform, darker.  They all wear a star, but not a military star.”

“How many points?”

“Five”

It was probably a pentagram, like the Soviet and American star. The five-pointed star was the Satanic abstraction of the goat-head, a symbol that had become so ubiquitous by the twentieth century that people no longer remembered what it meant.  Jezebel now peered into the guard's eyes, instructing him, “You are passing into a deep sleep.  You will not remember meeting me and you won't remember this conversation.”  His eyes drooped shut and his breathing became deep and regular.

The angel continued speaking.  “Tomorrow, you will quit this job; from now on you'll get fed up very quickly whenever you find that any of your employers are breaking a law that that helps the common people.  You will wish to work only for persons who seem to be honest.”

Jezebel was being easy on the wretch.  If someone found his dead body too soon, it might wake up the whole Monsatana factory while she and Holly were still in it.  This way, he would simply appear lazy, drunk, or sick.

#

Jezebel stood regarding herself in the truck's rear-view mirror.  She had just fixed her hair and tidied her makeup.  Presentable, the girl thought.  Despite her best efforts, she still came off looking like a rumpled hooker, but the guard's information had led her to conclude that rumpled hookers would not look out of place in such a cesspool of vice.

The Watcher sighed.  What was she doing?  What was she fighting for?  But that question was in vain; she already knew. She was fighting to stay out of the Lake of Fire.

  Jezebel was still wondering whether she was supposed to execute every Nephilim she encountered?  She was pretty sure that she was expected to keep unaffiliated human beings out of harm's way. It seemed a bother.

It always came back to one thing. Every grief that both mortals and angels had been undergoing for thousands of years had, directly or indirectly, descended from the consequences of the War in Heaven.  Why had there ever needed to be a war? The Father should have known before he ever created Satan what his creation would do.

Had the Creator allowed Satan's treason to go forward because suited some plan of his? Angels had free will, but because the Father knew the future, he should have known which choice they would make. So, was it truly free will after all? 

What a universe the Father had made! Billions of inferior creatures, each exercising its own free will, were determining the history of countless interconnected worlds from day to day.  And this, amazingly, seemed to go on without ever thwarting or altering the Father's master plan on whit. 

Jezebel's ruminations paused when it came up against a strange notion:  What did the Father know about her own future? Would it lead to terrible punishment, as with Satan, or would it be something else? Had he seen something that had motovated him to bring her, and no other Watcher, to this place, this time, these circumstances?

What quality could it have been?

Jezebel shook her head.  She had to keep on point. Time was wasting, and time, at least in this earthly realm, was finite.  To save herself in the longer term, she had to save Pelosia Wittke.  She was guessing that the special security detail would know where the girl was locked up, as her informant had said.  Their members, apparently, would be found especially thick in and around the Monsatana executive office building.

Once outside, Jezebel kept to the shadows, making her way inconspicuously toward the executive offices.  When a mutter of voices rose up, she ducked behind a concrete display that read: Monsatana: Food, Health, Hope.

The Watcher peered around one end of it, to see who was coming.  Pay dirt – sort of.  Two men were approaching, and they were both glowing a vibrant purple.  She considered stepping out to meet them, perhaps killing them, but instinct warned her not to take on two at the same time.  Immortal angels might dare almost anything, but in this body she could die.  She still hadn't done diddly squat to get off her track toward the Lake of Fire, so she needed to be careful.  Jezebel let the pair saunter by and then continued on her way.

Not too far from an entrance, the angel paused.  She needed to get inside the multi-storied structure, but considered that its security system might be very sophisticated.  Angel bodies were elusive, but how elusive could she be in a limited human shell?  Guessing that the main detectors would be thickest near the entry, she walked ten yards farther along and phased through the brick-and-mortar wall, coming out inside of what looked like an ordinary business office.

The room was lit by night lights, but Jezebel didn't waste time exploring it.  To save energy, she unlocked the exit by hand and stepped out into a carpeted hall.

It was a couple minutes passing before she detected footsteps.

Hidden in a deep doorway, the angel waited while a security man came down the corridor.  She let him advance while she made sure that he wasn't accompanied.  At the right moment she emerged into plain sight.  “Psst! Sir! Get me out of here!” she exclaimed.  “These people are crazy! They're going to murder me.”

The guard jumped back and pulled his revolver.  “Who the hell are you?”

“I'm Tracy.  A couple guys pushed me into a room and locked it.  But it had another exit that wasn't locked.  I have to get out!”

He grabbed her by the arm, digging his fingers in so hard that it would have been painful, except that Jezebel's sin-energy was making her flesh difficult to damage.  “I'm going to take you to the squad commander,” he said.

She pulled back.  “That's not a good idea!  This is a bad place.”

“I know it.  And now you know it,” he declared, as he started tugging her along.

Jezebel tried not to smile.  So far, so good.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 6, Part 1