IV. Weaver of Lies

Darrus stepped out of the Men's room in New Liberty Subway Station G14. Throughout history, demons had used simple doors as their portals to and from hell. Very few people would have noticed them at all, and Regulators, a class of demon skilled in the manipulation of free will, saw to it that those who would take note had their attention otherwise engaged.

Unfortunately limited to the confines of normal space, it took Darrus ten minutes to reach the appropriate destination. It was a run-down high rise, one of the endless slums that Rehnquist's iron fist had littered the world with. Darrus' destination was on the 39th floor, but the elevator was broken. He simply went through the first floor door to the stair and came out on the 39th; being not of this earth had its perks.

Darrus made his way down the dimly lit hall.

"Aye." said Odin's disembodied voice. Odin was tapped into both Darrus and the Nexus; they could communicate wirelessly with each other, and Odin saw and heard all that Darrus did. "I've been down here for 12oo years, and this how far they've gotten."

"You say that every time you see what Rehnquist's done to humanity." Darrus muttered.

"Aye. But that don't make it right."

"Why do you think I died trying to stop him?"

There was no response. Darrus arrived at room 3945, the room in question. He knocked.

"Who's there?" said a voice from inside.

Darrus replied with something that was a cross between a wail, a roar, and a word. No mortal throat could have produced it, and no written language had characters for the sound it made.

"I guess that'll do." There was the sound of the lock clicking. It said a lot about the building that that hall lights and elevator were out of order but that the door locks had been maintained. In fact, it said a lot about the city of New Liberty in general.

Darrus entered the room. Run-down was an understatement. Grayish sunlight poked through decayed venetian blinds and cast long shadows through the dusty air. There was a moldy mattress on the remains of a bedframe in one corner, a moth-eaten sofa against one wall and the shattered remains of a coffee table in the center of the room. On top of the crushed table and the drab carpetting it rested on was a disfigured corpse with some very unusual burn marks around it. A short, squat man stood in the corner. He had a white hair and mutton-chop sideburns with piercing blue eyes. A creature sat on his shoulder; Darrus couldn't tell if it was a cat or a lemur.

"Nigel?" asked Darrus. "Since when are you a Searcher?"

"I'm not." said the man. "I'm still a Weaver. Revis, the Searcher, was called away on other business, so they sent me here to make sure nobody who isn't supposed to gets an eyeful of this before I've come up with the official story."

Nigel was a Weaver of Lies, a demon who created myths, rumors, and urban legends, as well as explaining away what Hell didn't want humanity to know. Darrus and Nigel both worked in New Liberty, and so had crossed paths a few times before.

"What's the..." words to describe the animal on Nigel's shoulder escaped Darrus. He simply pointed instead. "That?"

"Oh, that's right! I finally got that familiar I've wanted for so long! It was a reward for starting that business about Chainer Jack."

Darrus paused. "The separatist vigilante Chainer Jack?"

Nigel nodded. "Mm-hm."

"Well, that's odd...I've seen Chainer Jack."

Nigel shook his head. "Not possible. I made him up."

"I'm not denying that. It looks as though someone's turning your legend into truth."

Nigel scowled. "Well, they're not taking Rapee-Cheep back!" He clutched the furry creature. Darrus hadn't met many Weavers, but they all had their eccentricities. It apparently came as part of the creative psyche.

"Yes, well, be that as it may, I have a job to do." said Darrus, surveying the corpse.

It lay in the center of the room, atop the ruins of the coffee table. The room had a ten foot ceiling, suggesting that the body would have had to have been dropped from very near the ceiling in order to gather enough momentum to break the table so thoroughly. The corpse looked to be a thirtyish male with brown hair and a square jaw wearing nondescript brown leather clothing. This was clearly a deceased angel; the man would've stood about six feet, ten inches tall; his eye sockets were empty, but showed no signs of trauma--the eyes had simply disappeared. In addition, there were two wings burned into the flooring beneath his shoulders and a halo above his head.

"I'd heard that the eyes disappear when they die." said Darrus. "Not to mention the wings and the halo burning up."

"Aye." said Odin. "Nexus says that if you were to open 'im up, there'd be no organs inside."

"Somebody beat us to it." There was a four-inch hole in angel's side, directly below where a human ribcage would have been. "Check the Nexus on this, but I'm relatively certain that no weapon made on Earth can injure divine beings."

"That'd be correct." said Odin.

"So, something's running around with some sort of either celestial or infernal artifact, it would seem?"

"Either that or someone from Upstairs had him put under."

"Angels killing other angels? That's only supposed to happen once, and that was a long time ago."

"Agreed."

"Nigel, what do you think?" Darrus asked.

The white-haired man shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I'm a story teller; figuring out the truth was never my forte."

"Yes." said Darrus. "But it's mine."

Darrus inspected the room. He stopped by one wall. "Look here, Odin. The dust is considerably lighter in this square than the rest of the room. Somebody took something from here, probably luggage of some."

"Most likely a trunk."

"So I'd think. Something odd...there are no footprints in here." Darrus mused.

Nigel laughed. "Of course there's no footprints! You know we don't leave them."

"Yes, I do. Angels don't, either. But humans do. That means that whatever killed this...thing...was either divine or knew how to cover its tracks. In which case the trunk doesn't make sense..."

"Why cover your tracks so carefully if but leave it obvious that something's missing from the room?" said Odin.

"Exactly." said Darrus.

"You...you have a Nexus tap, I assume?" asked Nigel.

"Yes, yes." said Darrus, trying to concentrate. This didn't add up. Of course, a dead angel that the Nexus didn't know about was a new thing; all the previous angelic assassinations had been deliberately planned and executed by demons. This was random, and seemingly impossible.

Darrus paced around the corpse a few times. "When the cleanup crew gets here, tell them they can do what they want with the body provided they don't destroy it and enter into the Nexus where it's going. I don't anticipate needing it again, but I want it taken care of in case I do."

"Where are you going?" asked Nigel.

"I've got some contacts around New Liberty I need to pay a few visits to."