When she was a little girl, she heard stories about angels who were secretly helping mankind. They’d come down to Earth to give mankind knowledge, weapons, and most important, the freedom from fear they needed to face the Reapers in battle.
She always wanted to meet the angels. Through a strange combination of circumstances involving a Quisling who’d been molesting her, she did. She’d murdered the evil rat, which seemed a strange gateway to an encounter with an angel, but that’s how it happened.
Hard to imagine angels playing politics.
To say the abandonment was a blow was an understatement. It was like she was standing on an entirely different planet. Everything she had thought to be true had suddenly gone wrong. The people, entities, angels—whatever you wanted to call them—who had inspired her, trained her, that she’d fought for, were quitting the fight just when it seemed as though they were getting ahead in the struggle.
What utter and complete bastards.
At least the rumors that the Lifeweavers were actually Kurians running both sides of the war were laid to rest. If that were the case, they’d keep playing their roles as long as each side needed an “other” to keep the confusion and killing going.
All the risks she’d run… Maybe it would have been better if she’d died in some ditch in Nebraska, rather than live to see this. All this time she’d fought with hope—lately it had been turning into certainty, after seeing how easy the shambles of the Kurian Order states collapsed if you just kicked them hard enough—and now that certainty was gone and hope was picking up its coat and hat.
Her gut was doing flip-flops. She briefly wondered if she’d passed out from exhaustion and was dreaming all this. The line of Lifeweavers up on the stage, all roughly the same age and looking like thei
r bodies had been designed rather than lived in, added a surreal quality. But no, her gut sometimes woke her up, but a sour belly had never made an appearance in a dream that she could remember. This was all too real.
She recognized one of the Lifeweavers in the party. His appearance now was exactly as it was then, when she and Valentine received the mission to go into the Midwest and assess the threat of the Twisted Cross. His robes were a little more formal, chosen for the occasion, no doubt.
Of course, everything with the Lifeweavers was for appearance’s sake. She’d come to terms with their being master illusionists long ago. There was no reason they couldn’t all be standing on the stage in the guise of old cereal box characters, if they so chose. They went with what worked, and tall, elegant, attractive, and stately individuals in prophet-hair and robes seemed to work with humans.
“My lord,” she called. “Father Cat!”
One of the security detail interposed, but the Lifeweaver waved him away. And there she was, face-to-face with a living demigod.
“How could you abandon us?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“We met years ago, in Arkansas, at the lodge for the Cats. I had a new aspirant with me, black hair—”
“Perhaps it was another using this guise,” the Lifeweaver said. “We find it easier to work from templates. Wait, you are Alessa Duvalier? Yes, we know you, the red wrath of the Midwest. Have you met Rolf of Trondheim? He is another great one of your vintage.”
“Do you think we like this? We don’t. The negotiations were handled by others, the decisions made by others. As it was explained to us, we get two planets, forever and absolutely, in exchange for Earth.
“I gave my life to you,” Duvalier said.
The Lifeweaver nodded gravely. “No, you gave it to your kind. It’s the oldest and best definition of heroism.”
“How can you quit on us? We’re winning this thing for you! Do you understand? Winning!”
“Precisely. You and those like you made this settlement possible. Had this planet been in the relative state it was thirty years ago, or even fifteen, we would never have had such an opportunity. You certainly deserve our thanks, and more.”
“Thanks? No thanks,” she said. “Why are we being given up? I know your kind have died here, too. Isn’t there another—”
“Why do they want Earth? First, you humans are rich in aura, and you breed quickly under different levels of stress and deprivation.Second, they made a case that Earth, being one of the few direct portals to Kur, and yet also a portal to many other worlds, was an ideal route for invasion. Earth is their new castle gate. Holding Earth saves them a fight on other worlds.”
She felt like she was flailing. What would Val say? Some cool, long-ranged argument, she supposed. She pretended to be him for a moment: “And once life here is consumed to the bedrock, what then? Don’t you think they’ll come across those gates, ‘forever and absolutely’ or no? When they come, won’t they be stronger than ever?”
“We will be stronger, too,” the Lifeweaver said. “If it is a matter of being left, there will be some population transfers allowed. You have little to hope for on the new Earth. Your emigration could be arranged to one of the worlds reserved for us. There is a plan to settle some humans on Eheru to ensure the survival of your species. Of course, the climate will not be that of your native Midwest.”
“Leave my home, friends, the whole shooting match?”
“I do not say it will be easy, only that we can offer you a better future than you have if you remain on Earth.”
“Leave—my planet?”
“We respire and take in water much as you. You would find one of our worlds peaceful. ‘Idyllic’ is not too strong a word. It would be easy to forget you are an exile among your fellows. No problem about leaving, as long as it is done quietly. The Kurians are only too glad to be rid of as many of our children among men as possible.”