Page 8 of Metatron

He saw me staring and offered an explanation. “Jesus healed you.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You were incapacitated, and since I needed to speak with you, I had the Jesus on board the cantorii heal you.”

“As in the actual Jesus Christ? Son of God?” I gaped.

“Scion, not son,” he corrected.

“What’s the difference?”

“A son is born of whereas a scion is a living extension of.”

Whatever. I’d missed an introduction to Jesus Christ because I’d been passed out drunk. “Can I meet him?”

“No.”

“Why not? How do I know Jesus Christ actually healed me?”

The angel sighed and waved his hand. An image appeared of the room we stood in and me, passed out on a bed, not looking so hot. No wonder he remained unimpressed with me. I watched as a hippy dude who could have played Shaggy entered, put his hands over me, glowed, and voila, I roused, healed of every ache and pain.

“Wow.” I couldn’t help but be impressed.

Tron appeared impatient. “Satisfied now?”

No, but I was working on it. “Where are we?”

“Aboard the cantorii, which is currently orbiting your planet.”

I snorted. “I think I would have heard if there was a spaceship spying on Earth.”

“We’re cloaked.”

“Of course you are.” The hits to my reality kept coming. Cloaking was something you heard about in sci-fi adventures but didn’t actually exist yet outside of movies. “And let me guess. We beamed here.” I did remember a bright light.

“Yes. Are we done with your mundane questions?” a terse query.

“Not entirely. I want to clarify something. You say you’re an angel employed by God, who lives in Heaven—”

“Hallowed be his name,” he offered quite seriously.

It threw me for a second. “And you’re here because…”

“My choir was sent on a mission of exploration. We discovered your lost colony by chance and have been ordered to retrieve as much suul as we can.”

“What’s s-o-o-l?” I tried to repeat it with his inflection.

“What’s left behind when one of the flock dies.”

I blinked. “You’re stealing souls?”

He frowned. “Hardly theft. Your planet is teeming with suul. We are simply harvesting it.”

“You’re slaughtering us for our souls?” I screeched.

“No!” he snapped. “We simply gather what’s already there from those who’ve passed.”

“And where does Hell fit into all this?”

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