MAJOR DELIVERY A Story of the Angel Zachiel by Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited In Nomine (c) 1997 Steve Jackson Games, Inc. "It's gotta be a prank," said Zach Stephens, scratching at the back of his head and gazing skeptically at the massive amount of pizza that his manager, Bill, and the two oven wranglers, Kerry and Jon, were loading into the cavernous back of his car. The alley behind Celestial Pizza on Highland Avenue in Worcester was a very familiar place for Zach. For three years, he'd worked as a - in some lean times THE - delivery driver for the restaurant, and he'd wedged his old Cadillac hearse into the alley so many times he could now accomplish that seemingly superhuman feat without turning his head, using only the mirrors. The hearse itself was a familiar sight around the WPI area, its gleaming black paint job and shining yellow, orange and white flame job identifying it easily even without the large Celestial Pizza logo decals on the doors. Many a leisurely driver in the area had glanced in his rearview mirror to see it filled with the '57 Caddy's looming, flaming grille, and the words "HOT PIZZA" in large, intimidating red letters (considerately reversed so that he could read them in the mirror). This is not to say that Zach was an inconsiderate driver; but he was often in a hurry. The considerate regular would find a place to slide over a bit and let the hearse roar by, thus gaining an opportunity to see the restaurant's telephone number and a black-and-white bumper sticker reading, "FOR UNOFFICIAL USE ONLY". Bill Hanson shook his balding head and grunted noncommittally as he stacked the last of the pizzas in the back of the hearse (known to Zach and his friends, affectionately, as "The Judgment-Mobile"). "They paid by credit card," he said in a voice made raspy by too many years of smoking. "If it's a prank, it's an expensive one." "This freaks me out," Jon Tabor remarked as he closed the Judgment-Mobile's rear gate. "I mean, there's, like, more pizza in here than a dead guy." Everyone had to pause for a moment and parse the fractured grammar of Jon's statement before Kerry Marshall could toss her blonde ponytail and remark, "You are -such- a flake, Jon." "Well," Zach remarked, spinning his oversized keyring around his index finger a few times, "mine not to wonder why, I guess. See you guys when I get back." He checked to see that the Caddy's gate was properly latched, slid behind the wheel, and started it up. The engine's finely tuned throb of power was immediately overlaid by the pounding 4-on-the-floor techno groove of Zach's favorite trance band, Alpha Collider. The rest of the Celestial Pizza Thursday-night crew could hear it even after the sound of the Caddy's engine had blended into the traffic on Highland. Zach thumbed the doorbell button for the fourth time and waited, already feeling impatient. He didn't like delivering to Theta Chi House... too much chance of somebody deciding to rough him up. Not that he was afraid, particularly; it was just that getting out of situations like that without getting hurt tended to leave him with things to explain to his boss later. Things sounded particularly rowdy in there tonight, too; outside on the stoop, he could hear a lot of loud talking and laughing, the clink of bottles, and something in the background that sounded almost like chanting. He was just about to hit the bell for the fifth time when the door was finally yanked open by a tall, lanky, still-mostly-sober Theta Chi brother. Zach looked steadily back as the brother looked him over, sizing him up. What the frat brother saw was a man somewhere in his twenties, tallish and thin, dressed in tattered cutoff jeans, Tevas, and a garish Mexican wool pullover with a pouch pocket in front. Zach's long, straight blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail like a thatch of straw, tied behind his head and at its end at belt-level with black ribbons. He wore round wire-framed glasses and had a thin, thoughtful, clean-shaven face, and his blue eyes always held a hint of restlessness, which was also betrayed by the way his long fingers almost always unconsciously fidgeted as if they held a guitar. He had a golden cross earring hanging from his left ear and a pencil tucked behind his right, and his Celestial Pizza hat proclaimed his allegiance for all the world to see. Zach grinned - not because he was happy to see the frat brother, per se, although it was relieving that someone had finally answered the door - and announced, "Celestial Pizza - delivered on the wings of angels!" Something about that motto always made Zach feel like smiling when he delivered it, corny though it was. The frat brother's face broke into a delighted smile. "Cool! Hey guys, the pizza dude's here! C'mon, let's help him carry the stuff in." Much to Zach's relief, several burly (and still vaguely steady on their feet) brothers turned out to unload the massive quantity of pizza from the back of the Judgment-Mobile and carry it into the house, where, as Zach had suspected, there was a party going on. As he stood by the step waiting for the fraternity treasurer to sign off on the credit card receipt, though, Zach happened to glance toward the house's common room and realize that there was something very odd about this party. Noticing the direction of his gaze, the treasurer glanced, then grinned. "Wanna see something really cool?" Zach managed a grin, although some instinct told him the wise answer here was "no". "Sure!" he replied. "C'mon in, then." The treasurer led him to the common room, where the brothers and their beverages were gathered around the edges of the room. The center had been cleared of furniture, and a magic circle of sorts had been laid out in chalk - a crude, but effective, and somehow annoyingly typical pentagram. The pizza, Zach noticed, was piled in the middle of the circle. "What's the deal?" Zach asked nonchalantly. "You gonna summon Satan with pizza or something?" "Well, not Satan, exactly," said the treasurer with a grin, "but somebody who knows him." Zach looked at the treasurer, then around the room, trying to decide if they were all just screwballs, or if they were serious. Then the brothers began chanting, and the chant contained a name he recognized. Zach looked around, wondering if he could slip quietly out and get the hell away from here, but the brothers had completed their ring and the door was blocked. Short of actually having a spaz attack, knocking a couple of them out of the way and jumping out a window, there was no escape for Zach Stephens now. He shrugged inwardly and settled in to watch. As the frat brothers chanted, Zach began to feel a wrongness about the room. He always felt the ebb and flow of the cosmic Symphony of which he, like all living things, was a part. He'd found that some forms of music complemented it - in particular, he was certain that one or more of the members of Alpha Collider could hear it as well, and wrote their music as a sort of accentuated techno version of various small bits. Now he felt the Symphony's backbeat pick up, heard a creeping atonal line slip into the bass. It was actually kind of funky, but it was way too modal to be anything good, he was certain of that. The new melody built to a crescendo along with the brothers' chanting, and at the peak, something passed through a barrier between one place and another and appeared in the middle of the circle - a hairy, misshapen, horrible thing, like a stunted body appended to the huge, slavering maw in the middle as an afterthought. It hopped and skipped to the infernal beat of the line it brought to the local Symphony, laughed heartily, and proceeded to consume all the pizza. Then the brothers ceased chanting, the creature ceased eating, and there was a momentary impasse, during which Zach Stephens could be seen to look, though not fearful, very impressed. It's not every day you see a college fraternity summon a demon prince, even one as basically gregarious as Haagenti, the Prince of Gluttony. "Hi guys!" announced Haagenti, his tone of familiarity indicating that he knew the brothers well. "Good eats, as always. What's up?" "Dude," said Zach to the frat treasurer, playing dumb. "That's, like, some kind of demon?" "You bet," replied the treasurer. "That's Haagenti, the Demon Prince of Gluttony. He's a friend of the House - has been for years. Hey, Haagenti!" he called. "There's somebody here you gotta meet!" Uh-oh, thought Zach to himself as the hairy demon's beady eyes focused on him, taking in the thin physique, the laid-back attitude, the hat. "You the pizza guy?" asked the Demon Prince of Gluttony. "That's me," Zach replied. "Celestial Pizza - delivered on the wings of angels!" Haagenti looked taken aback by this for a moment, than let out a great yawping belly laugh. "Celestial Pizza! Haw! That's great. Good stuff, too. Here, this's for you." With this, the demon produced a roll of bills from... well, -somewhere-... and handed them to Zach with a clawed hand. "You guys remember this place from now on!" he declared. "Best damn pizza I ever got summoned with. So what's on the agenda for tonight, boys?" As the treasurer showed Zach out, he overheard one of the brothers say to Haagenti, "Well, there's this other frat on campus that... " Zach decided he really didn't want to know. The next morning, Zach awoke at eleven or so, rested up from an evening of deliveries that got more hectic, but certainly less bizarre, after his visit to Theta Chi. Yawning, he pulled on a random WPI shirt that wasn't stiff in the armpits yet and padded barefoot into the small, untidy living room of his apartment. The message light on his machine was flashing, so he tapped the play button and plopped down in his prized brown armchair to listen. "Zach, it's Dave," came the voice of Dave Armstead, the drummer in Zach's band, The Worcester Surphonic Orchestra. "I locked down our gig for the 23rd... start getting a playlist together. We get a half hour before the Curtain Society goes on." "Excellent," Zach grinned, grabbing the note pad off the endtable and scribbling a note to himself. The next, and last, message on the machine was very short, very simple, and very direct. "I will arrive at noon," the quiet but forceful voice of a man said. "Please try to be wearing a clean shirt this time." Zach sighed, went into the bathroom, showered, brushed his teeth, and had just hunted up a clean shirt when the knock came at his door. The man he let in was unremarkable in appearance. Of average height, slim, with short black hair slicked back like a seal's fur, he had aquiline features and sharp black eyes. Dressed in his dark suit, he looked like a senior FBI agent, or perhaps a successful lawyer. In truth, he was something very like both of those, but vastly above either. No one looking at him would realize that Zach Stephens was being visited by no less a personage than Dominic, the Archangel of Judgment. Dominic sang, in a chorus of tones that could arise from no human throat or tongue - the language of angels, the fabric of the Symphony itself. "Hey, Chief," said Zach. "Have a seat." Dominic sat, as requested. Zach wondered if his boss took the rather uncomfortable yellow wingback because he knew Zach loved the brown armchair, or just because he didn't want to look as undignified as one inevitably did when engulfed in the armchair's Stygian depths. Either way, it didn't really matter to Zach as he plopped himself down, sinking so that his knees almost rose above his head. "'Sup in the Home Office these days?" asked Zach. "The usual," Dominic replied in English. "The War goes on. Have you anything unusual to report this week?" "Do I ever," Zach replied. "You know Haagenti?" "Not personally," Dominic replied dryly. "The Demon Prince of Gluttony," Zach supplied helpfully. "I know who he -is-, Zachiel," said Dominic in a tone that implied tried - or perhaps merely tired - patience. "What -about- him?" "I saw him yesterday," Zach replied. Dominic sat forward, his eyes widening. "You -what-?" "The brothers down at Theta Chi summoned him. From the way they were talking, I got the impression they'd done it before, too." "You -watched- them summon him? A Demon Prince?" "Yup, right there in their living room. They had a big magic circle, see, and like about sixty pounds of pizza - " "I'm not -interested- in the technique, Zachiel," Dominic interrupted. "Are you absolutely certain it was Haagenti himself?" "You know anybody else who's three and a half feet of mouth? No, it was definitely the dude himself. He was playing a funky backbeat on the Symphony that made me hungry just listening to it." "What were you doing there?" Dominic demanded. "I'm the pizza dude, remember? Somebody had to deliver the stuff." Dominic's expression took on a strange combination of annoyance and enlightenment as he remembered that, but was annoyed with himself for forgetting it. "Did he see you?" Zach nodded ruefully. "One of the brothers pointed me out." He grinned. "Haagenti said Celestial Pizza was the best pizza he'd ever been summoned with!" Dominic fought an urge to roll his eyes. "Did he say anything to you? Give anything to you?" "Yeah... he told me he loved the pizza and gave me a tip." "A tip?" "Yeah, y'know, a gratuity? It's, like, traditional to tip the pizza dude." "How much did he give you?" "A hundred bucks." "-One hundred dollars-?!" "Hey, it was a -lot- of pizza!" Zach replied indignantly. "The whole back of the Judgment-Mobile was like -stoked-!" Dominic sighed. "I -wish- you wouldn't call it that. Its name - " "Yeah, I know, its name is Caddiel, but it -likes- to be called the Judgment-Mobile." Dominic conceded the point, as he did every week, and went on to an issue he felt was more important: "What would a fraternity want with Haagenti?" Zach shrugged, then looked past Dominic, cocked his head, and grinned, pointing. Dominic turned in his chair to see the day's Worcester Telegram & Gazette, lying on the floor where it had fallen through the letter slot, then been pushed aside by Zach opening the door. The main headline read, "BIZARRE PRANK AT WPI". Below was an offset-printed color photo of landmark Fiji Rock, "owned" by a rival fraternity of Theta Chi's. The rock had what appeared to be a large bite taken out of it, and the wound had suffered the words "OX RULES OK!" spray-painted in it. Dominic turned to regard Zachiel for a moment, then spoke slowly and clearly: "Let me get this straight. You honestly believe that the brothers of the Theta Chi fraternity summoned Haagenti, the Demon Prince of Gluttony, merely so they could enlist his aid in a -college prank-?" Zach nodded without a moment's hesitation. "Yup! That's exactly what I think." Dominic studied his young servant's face and that which lay beyond it for several minutes, then sighed. Irreverent, possessed of skewed priorities, and generally odd Zachiel might be, but one thing he could always be counted upon to be was honest. If there were something deeper than simple pranksterhood involved in Haagenti's summoning, Zachiel did not believe in it. "You realize that they could never have summoned a Demon Prince on their own, even if some of there number are sorcerers," Dominic pointed out. "One of them must be a Diabolical, one of his Servitors." Zach nodded. "I'm on it, but it'll take me a while to ferret him out. I'm betting whoever he is, he's an Impudite. Probably sucks down Essence along with beer at their keggers." Another positive quality Zachiel had in Dominic's eyes was a good set of instincts. Some Archangels said that Ofanim like Zachiel were flighty, flaky, and unfocused; after working with Zach for a while, Dominic realized that, as long as an Ofanite's need to move was not impeded, they made excellent agents - dynamic, tireless, and efficient. Dominic nodded at Zach's assessment, then rose to leave. "I will visit next Friday. See if you can have something for me by then." "No problemo. Hey, the Surphony's got a show on the 23rd. Think you can make it? I can get you in for free." Dominic paused at the door, looked back at Zach's eager grin, then shrugged. "I will see if I can free the time. Fax me the details and I'll let you know." "You got it, Chief. And don't worry, I'll find out who the hornhead is in Theta Chi." Dominic allowed himself a small smile as he replied, "I have every confidence. Good day, Zachiel." "Take it easy, Chief," said Zach as the door closed behind his Superior. He sat in his chair, thoughtfully strumming some fake surf licks with his empty hands for a few moments, and considered. Dominic had a bad rep, certainly a lot worse than that of Zachiel's true Superior, Eli. In fact, the general belief was that Dominic didn't like Eli all that much. Zach had been with the Archangel of Judgment long enough now, and felt he knew the Archangel well enough, to know that it wasn't as simple as that. And he really wasn't such a bad guy to work for, as long as you didn't try to pull any fast ones. Zach grinned, picked up the phone and started organizing a Surphony rehearsal. --END--