He sighs.

“Yeah. I figured.”

He manifests his Gladius, his angelic sword of fire, and takes a swing at my head. The attack is slow. Completely for show. Why shouldn’t it be? He’s an angel and I’m just a lost spirit who wandered in from nowhere. I manifest my own Gladius, block his blow, and cut a nice diagonal slice through his chest plate. He falls back, eyes wide.

April Fool, motherfucker.

His Gladius is on the ground, but I’m mad. He made me drop one of my last cigarettes. I move in fast and get my sword under his chin.

“What’s your name?”

“Rizoel./diC;Rizoe201D;

“Well, Rizoel, you know that I could kill you entirely here and now, right? I know fallen angels go to Tartarus when they die, but I’m not clear on what happens to nice angels. Given my natural inclinations, I’d like to slice and dice you just to see where you end up. Lucky for you there’s a little angel that lives in my head and I know he won’t shut up about it if I turn you into chum. So to sum up, this is your lucky day. Understand?”

Rizoel gives me a mininod, making sure not to let the Gladius touch his chin.

“Here’s the deal. You can walk away but you have to do something for me. What do you think? You ready to come on down off your high-and-mighty for a second and make a deal?”

“I don’t seem to have a choice.”

“Sure you do. But one of them isn’t pretty.”

The angel nods.

“All right.”

I let my Gladius go out. The angel tries to stand, but he’s favoring the side where I slashed him. I take his other arm and help him up.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” he says. “The nephilim. The monster who kills monsters.”

“I’ll give you an autograph, but if it shows up on eBay, I’m going to be mad.”

“You are an Abomination and will not pass through these holy gates.”

I should have seen that coming. Never trust an angel.

We both fire up our Gladiuses and go at each other. Even hurt, the angel is inhumanly fast and strong, but so am I. He’s not going to fall for the same trick twice, so I stay in close to him. He can’t get a good swing at me, and with his injured arm he can’t push me back enough to put me in dissecting range. But he figures out what I’m doing and kicks my leg. When I stumble he gets an overhead shot at my back. I see it coming and turn my shoulders so he only gets a piece of me. Still, the blow burns like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It feels a lot like a magic flaming sword.

I snap my head up under his chin and knock him back. I swing at his shoulder, but the prick has been playing possum. He grabs my throat with what I thought was his injured arm, raises his sword with the other, and brings it down at my head. I kick out my feet and fall backward, pulling him down with me. As we fall I swing my sword up between us. The angel lands on top of me and my Gladius goes out.

He’s big, and with all that armor it feels like chorus line decided to do a show on my chest. It takes all of my strength to roll him off me. Once he starts moving, he goes easily. In fact he loses some weight in the process. His left urts. His arm falls off where I sliced through it in the fall.

I manifest my Gladius again and swipe it lightly across his face, giving him a scar like one of mine. He stays on his back, staring up at me. Angels don’t bleed, but something thick and clear is leaking out from where his arm used to be, closing the wound.

“You’re lucky. I want you to do my favor more than I want to kill you. This is your second chance to stay alive. No one gets a third.”

He closes his eyes for a second then turns his head to where his arm isn’t.

“I agree.”

“Swear, angel. Swear a holy oath you can’t break.”

He blinks twice. Stares into the sun. He’s thinking, Father why have you forsaken my ass? Because he can’t choose you over the other angels bootlicking hosannas. Or like the rest of us, you’re just another bug on his windshield.

“I swear and make a holy pledge as a servant of the Lord to abide by the bargain we make.”

I let the Gladius go out, grab his chest plate at the neck, and pull him up. Toss him back against Eden’s gates and get up close to his face so he won’t miss a word.

“Tell Lucifer I’m coming for him.”

Rizoel looks at me.

“Lucifer was his name in Perdition. In Heaven, he’s Samael.”

“Call him Travis Bickle for all I care, just tell him I’m coming. And I’m bringing all of Hell with me. Got it?”

“What kind of man are you that you’d wage war on Heaven?”

“It was this or stay home and watch The Wizard of Oz, and I hate musicals.”

I leave him where he is, flame on my Gladius, and slice through the chains on the gates. One kick and Eden is open for business.

Rizoel staggers back.

“I’m going to get written up for this, you know. It’ll go on my permanent record.”

“Shouldn’t you be on your way somewhere?”

Rizoel is horrified at seeing an Abomination in the garden. One step. Two steps. He doesn’t move. I think he was expecting me to turn into a pillar of salt. I turn, and when he doesn’t move, I drag my Gladius through the rosebushes. They burst into flame.

He takes a couple of steps back, shaking his head. “You are such an asshole.”

“Don’t forget our deal. By the way, how do I get to Hell in here?”

The look of disgust fades as his lips draw up into a big Cheshire-cat smile.

“It’s easy. Exactly the way the human part of you did it the first time.”

Before I get a word out, Rizoel spreads his wings and throws himself into the ridiculously bright blue sky.

I take a look around the garden. It’s just a fucking garden. Rizoel was too gleeful to just be mocking me. He was giving me a clue. Hell is in here somewhere.

I stroll around the garden like a tourist in the kind of flower prison that florists dream about. After a while all the plants look the same to me. Leaves. Got it. Stems and flowers. Got it. Bark and fruit. Got it. I’m Steve McQueen and the Blob is after me, only it’s made of dandelions and begonias.

Where is Hell in here? I stomp through the rosebushes and under pine trees. Climb up snaky vines and dig up screaming mandrakes. That was a bad idea. I thought they might be carrots. I’m getting hungry.

There’s nothing here. No doors. No rabbit holes. No hoodoo portals or sci-fi transporters. I’m stuck in a feed-store calendar and I’m getting just a little pissed off.

Fuck you, angel, and everyone who’s been spewing cryptic crap at me. The way you did the first time. “Be a rock.” “Click your heels three times and think of flying monkeys.” The next thing that quotes me a fortune cookie gets turned into a novelty paperweight.

Time is passing. Tick tock. Tick tock.

There’s nothing left to do. Hey, Heaven. I let your angel live, but you don’t understand the concept of cutting someone slack, huh? Fine by me. When this is over, just remember that you set the rules. Not me.

There’s only one thing to do with a garden if it won’t give you what you want. Get rid of it.

I drag the flaming Gladius along the ground as I stroll through the winding path that curves from the entrance through the orchards, the redwoods, the pines, the thorny jungle foliage, and the crayon-colored flower beds, cutting a flaming red scar behind me. God must have yanked all the animals out of here when he gave Adam and Eve the boot. Good. The life of one flea-bitten squirrel means more than one inch of this pussy-willow paradise.

Fuck this place and fuck your games. This is where you first failed us. You gave us minds and told us not to think. You gave us curiosity and put a booby-trapped tree right in front of us. You gave us sex and told us not to do it. You played three-c">

Whatever your reasons, you won’t have Paisley Park much longer. All you gave us here was daisies and fairy tales and you acted like that was enough. How were we supposed to resist evil when you didn’t even tell us about it? You wanted us innocent. But when Lucifer found a way around your rules and we weren’t innocent anymore, you blamed us and tossed us out into the wasteland like garbage.