Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

an hour after I’d taken the antidote. Balthasar had sent Joshua to find me and bring me to the library, supposedly to see how I was doing.
    Josh put his hand on my forehead, but instead of the usual calm that accompanied that gesture, it felt as if he’d lain a hot branding iron across my skin. I knocked his hand aside. “Thanks, but it’s not helping.”
    “Maybe a bath,” Joshua suggested.
    “Tried it. Jeez, this is driving me mad!” I hopped around in a circle because I didn’t know what else to do.
    “Maybe Balthasar has something that can help,” Joshua said.
    “Lead on,” I said. “I can’t just sit here.”
    We headed off down the corridor, going down several levels on the way to the library. As we descended one of the spiral ramps I grabbed Joshua’s arm.
    “Josh, look at this ramp, you notice anything?”
    He considered the surface and leaned out to look at the sides of the tread. “No. Should I?”
    “How about the walls and ceilings, the floors, you notice anything?”
    Joshua looked around. “They’re all solid rock?”
    “Yes, but what else? Look hard. Think of the houses we built in Sepphoris. Now do you notice anything?”
    “No tool marks?”
    “Exactly,” I said. “I spent a lot of time over the last two weeks staring at walls and ceilings with nothing much else to look at. There’s not the slightest evidence of a chisel, a pick, a hammer, anything. It’s as if these chambers had been carved by the wind over a thousand years, but you know that’s not the case.”
    “So what’s your point?” Joshua said.
    “My point is that there’s more going on with Balthasar and his girls than he lets on.”
    “We should ask them.”
    “No, we shouldn’t, Josh. Don’t you get it? We need to find out what’s going on without them knowing that we know.”
    “Why?”
    “Why? Why? Because the last time I asked a question I was poisoned, that’s why. And I believe that if Balthasar didn’t think you had something that he wants, I’d have never seen the antidote.”
    “But I don’t have anything,” said Joshua, honestly.
    “You might have something you don’t know you have, but you can’t just go asking what it is. We need to be devious. Tricky. Sneaky.”
    “But I’m not good at any of those things.”
    I put my arm around my friend’s shoulders. “Not always so great being the Messiah, huh?”

C hapter 13
“I could kick that punk’s punk ass,” the angel said, jumping on the bed, shaking a fist at the television screen.
“Raziel,” I said, “you are an angel of the Lord, he is a professional wrestler, I think it’s understood that you could kick his punk ass.” This has gone on for a couple of days now. The angel has found a new passion. The front desk has called a dozen times and sent a bellman up twice to tell the angel to quiet down. “Besides, it’s just pretend.”
Raziel looked at me as if I had slapped him. “Don’t start with that again, these are not actors.” The angel back flipped on the bed. “Ooo, ooo, you see that? Ho popped him with a chair. Thaz right, you go girl. She nasty.”
It’s like that now. Talk shows featuring the screaming ignorant, soap operas, and wrestling. And the angel guards the remote control like it’s the Ark of the Covenant.
“This,” I told him, “is why the angels were never given free will. This right here. Because you would spend your time watching this.”
“Really?” Raziel said, and he muted the TV for what seemed like the first time in days. “Then tell me, Levi who is called Biff, if by watching this I am abusing the little freedom I’ve been given while carrying out this task, then what would you say of your people?”
“By my people you mean human beings?” I was stalling. I didn’t remember the angel ever making a valid point before and I wasn’t prepared for it. “Hey, don’t blame me, I’ve been dead for two thousand years. I wouldn’t have let this sort of thing happen.”
“Uh-huh,” said the angel, crossing his arms and striking a pose of incredulity that he had learned from a gangster rapper on MTV.
If there was anything I learned from John the Baptist, it was that the sooner you confess a mistake, the quicker you can get on to making new and better mistakes. Oh, that and don’t piss off Salome, that was a big one too. “Okay, we’ve fucked up,” I said.
“Thaz whut I’m talkin’ about,” said the angel, entirely too satisfied with himself.
Yeah? Where was he when we