Radicle (Terminal trilogy #2, can stand alone)

27: Lawyers, guns, and money

 There's a very simple way to describe the following days: I lost my moral self fairly quickly, and not one person, including myself, seemed to mind.

I had a lot of sex, for one, which I pretty quickly discovered was a lot better than not having sex. Most of my followers were willing to lay with me, and occasionally I'd experiment with them- but I preferred Lil.

Who, by the way, was really the only one who seemed a bit concerned in my sudden shift in behavior. She'd still sleep with me, and I hope she still enjoyed that part of our friendship, but I wasn't blind to the looks of worry she sometimes gave me.

I had taken to sleeping in her bed whether or not we had engaged in sexual relations the night before, and every morning she'd reach out to touch my wing and catch my eye. Then I'd normally laugh a bit and kiss her, but her seemingly negative outlook was starting to wear on me.

I was feeling good. Real good, actually. I didn't leave the church building much myself, but I'd wake up each day, shower, and fix my hair in the mirror. I had gotten myself hair gel, and it made my hair ridiculous looking. I liked it.

Then I'd eat breakfast- these days I just asked one of my followers to prepare me something I'd never had to eat before, and then I'd go about eating it. It was always different, and I partook in the same sort of ritual for lunch and dinner.

I'd have sex with whoever whenever the mood struck. I wasn't really that demanding about it, I thought, as I really did try to establish a sort of conversation between myself and my chosen partner. Tried to make sure we had some compatible personalities before I let myself get absorbed in anything else. Then I'd promptly forget about half the things I had learned, but at least I held onto their names. I was good with names.

I was starting to drink too. It never had done much for me, so now I had turned to the heavy alcohols. I'd spend hours drunk off my mind, puke it all up, sleep for half a day and then go at it again. I also started smoking, since it didn't really hinder my mental state. It was sort of awful, but whatever. Now was a time of indulgence.

I was getting a bit lazy, I guess, so much so that it really did take me a good two weeks to check up on the outside world. I didn't feel particularly safe going outside myself, so I usually relied on the information Lil or Jeff gave me. But Lil rarely seemed happy to approach me these days, so it was up to Jeff to relay whatever I wanted to know.

Jeff was a sort of tall and, I eventually realized, good looking man who always had a little bit of black stubble on his face, even though I had seen him shave regularly. After a few days of trial and error, I realized I didn't really enjoy sex with men. But Jeff had been one of the better ones, and I could tell he had felt our more intimate connection had bonded us to be close friends.

"It's all over the news that you're back. The streets as well. A couple of our sister sects are pretty emotional about it- one's claiming you're an impostor, while another is sure you came back to life. You know, like Jesus? There's also this one anonymous group currently trying to get our building shut down- they've been protesting all week."

"Protesting what?" We were sitting in a makeshift living room at the end of the second floor hallway, Jeff getting up from his chair to pace whenever he felt nervous and myself leaning back and eating a particularly bland sandwich.

"It's not clear. You? They also released hundred of mice into our entry hall the other day, if you heard of that, then called in a city inspector for a health code violation. We got rid of most of the mice at this point, we think."

"How have The Few been dealing with all this?" I hadn't really heard about everyone's favorite group of aristocrats for a while now.

"They haven't. I suppose it's within their business, considering everything is their business, but they haven't released any sort of official message on it. There's rumors Blair Park's a worshipper, actually, but that's probably just the tabloids."