God's Gone AWOL

[8] Reverend Wilson Montgomery

Bentley spent some more time humming and hawing outside the gates of Hell, but after a while, she suddenly realized that she had more important things to be doing other than thinking about Atticus. Once she'd screwed her head back on properly, she allowed herself to think.

Hell had rejected her because she was no longer a demon. That was annoying, but completely fair from a logical standpoint. This meant that although she was historically known as a demon, she now possessed the physical divine powers of an angel. As Lucy had revealed earlier, she was immune to the effects of holy water, and although the way he went about telling her wasn't exactly ideal, it still gave Bentley some ideas.

Hell had rejected her because she was an angel. So did that mean she could enter the gates of Heaven unhindered? There was only one way to find out.

Before her death, Bentley had actually known the location of several Heavenly gateways. Although the angels prided themselves in their ability to keep the locations hidden, Bentley had found them anyway. It wasn't because Heaven was incompetent, of course. It was just because Bentley was Bentley. She just knew these things, and nobody quite knew how she figured them out.

But that was before her death. Like the gates of Hell, all seven of Heaven's gates had no doubt been moved in the past few decades for security reasons. And although Bentley was still the same individual, there was no denying that she had lost a significant amount of her influence in the years of her absence. Things had changed, so she wouldn't be able to shamelessly go back to her old tricks; fooling weak-hearted angels into telling her the locations, setting up her loyal demonic admirers to monitor every suspicious doorway, or however it was that she got her information —even she had trouble remembering how she managed it all back then. No matter what, this time, she was completely alone.

She couldn't ask Hell for help —Xander had made that very clear. But what could Hell do for her anyway? Not even the members of the High Council knew where the gates of Heaven were. Maybe it really was best if she kept her head down and did everything by herself. Who could say? Searching on her own might just be more efficient anyway, with a lower risk of being discovered.

Bentley scanned her memories for any recollection of the gates of Heaven. They were moved on several occasions before The Fall, so there were a few hundred different locations around the Earthly realm that might be viable. Of course, she was assuming that Heaven recycled their gateway spots every few millennia or so. There was a chance that the gateways in her memories might never see the touch of Heaven again. But she knew what she knew, so she might as well start from there.

There was a tunnel in rural India. It was fairly new —built in the 1800s when railroads were starting to pop up everywhere. The location was near an old, abandoned Sikh Gurdwara, so the holy energy in the air was prevalent, making it an ideal place to put a gateway. Heaven had attached itself to the tunnel shortly after it was built, and it had remained as a gate right up until Bentley's death. It was unlikely that it was still active after everything that had happened, but Bentley might as well give it a try.

It was pitch-black in India when she arrived. Even though the tunnel was right beside a long dirt road, there were no street lamps or settlements to provide her with any light. Amidst the dense forest of trees, plants, and millions of unnamed animals and bugs, the warm, moist air around her was tinted with the soothing smell of life. The darkness closed in on all sides, giving off an almost sheltering atmosphere. All the tension that had built up in Bentley's heart gradually started to unravel as she embraced the wonder of the night.

Kneeling before the gaping mouth of the tunnel, Bentley started drawing out the lines of her detection spell. From the center of her palm, a steady stream of white salt poured down between her curled hand. She looked very much like a child building a sandcastle as she guided the fine grains until she had properly drawn the array. Then she lit a magically produced candle, plucked a vial of Holy Water from her pocket, and popped the cork.