I should be crapping myself right now, but geckos aren't afraid of heights. The weird thing is that when I find myself on a roof, upside down on a ceiling, or high up in the spire of a temple, I feel secure, as though I'm safe. I'm so high that I can just make out Taur's bald head, and the blinding white hair of Liana, which means they aren't looking up, and haven't realized I've been seized by a giant bird of prey.

The wind buffets my body as I roll toward my back while hurtling through the air. My hunter blots the crescent moon, and I see it isn't a bird at all, but a bat, with auburn fur like a Labrador retriever. It flaps its leathery ebony wings and banks, headed toward the mountains on the black horizon. The wind rippling my skin as I plummet to the street cools my hands, which feel the residual sting of burning.

I roll as I fall, slowly spinning as though I'm on a spit, which gives me a chance to see the street I'm racing toward. I'm up so high that I have plenty of time to savor the fall, and I'm wracking my mind for a relevant scripture, like Psalm of Plummeting to One's Death from a Crazy-Ass Height. I'm coming up empty.

But I do remember sitting on the mahogany wood floor of Juvelyn's parents' house up in the mountains in the Philippines, late at night when the house is lit by two florescent bulbs mounted beneath a rafter. Moths swarm the light, which draws geckos called tiki, which love nothing more than a moth. The men sit on the floor smoking tobacco wrapped in lumboy leaves, passing around a glass of coconut wine, while the women are in the kitchen.

Everyone is speaking rapid Bisaya when a gecko called a tiki falls from the ceiling and hits the floor belly-first with a splat. I think it's dead because it's still.

But several moments later it comes to life and as if to say, “Oh @%#&, I just fell,” it scampers off before it runs back up the wall.

At this altitude (well, the altitude I started falling from, because I've been falling as my mind is wandering), I'm not going to be intact when I land, and I won't be stunned, unless by “stunned” you mean deader than a door nail.

A psalm pops into my head, a bit from the Song of Deliverance:

Oh Lord, you have lifted me to sail the heights.

As the gecko soars among the trees

seeking refuge from the serpent,

winds of hope have raised me to fly

on the wings of Your psalms

Does falling like a rock count as “soaring among the trees”? I've got a bad feeling that I'm far from it. If I had a nickel for every time the psalms mention a gecko I'd be a rich man. “Man,” ha ha. That's a good one, and nobody on this planet knows what a nickel is, so I'll die poor.

The more you die, the easier it gets, but you can't let it become a bad habit.

Vic, embrace me.

I know that voice, and I know who's speaking, but it seems a bit too touchy-feeling for me. “Embrace me”? That's awkward.

I catch myself in my pride. For crying out loud, I'm a six-foot gecko, plummeting to my death in the dark, and I'm worried about feeling embarrassed?

I spread my arms out wide, like I'm a kid running to my dad, who's just come home from work and parked the patrol car outside the house. My arms are wide open, prepared to wrap myself around his legs in a child's hug.

“Lord, I embrace you.” I spread my arms wide as I fall.

Skin unfolds from my sides, running from my manacled wrists all the wall down to my shackled feet. Like a sail unfurling in an instant, the folds of skin pop, and I bounce in the air. I was afraid this was going to get all maudlin, but I'm gliding, soaring like a gecko among the trees, which really shouldn't be all that surprising. Like a cat, my tail helps to steer me, but unlike a cat, I don't suck.

I narrowly miss a chimney as I come in low and fast. I sail over the street, causing Taur and Liana to drop into a fighting crouch when my shadow passes over them, and I hit the far wall hard. My manacles chip the plaster when I catch myself, and the impact of my belly on the wall pinpoints the location of several bruises.

“You can fly?” Liana asks, opening her pale blue eyes wide in surprise.

“Glide, actually. Don't ask me how I found out.” I nod upward with my snout. “We've got work to do.”

* * *

All of us have slept soundly throughout the day. We were beaten by a mob, then I went for a long swim while Liana and Taur were imprisoned. We spent the rest of the night taking out members of the Red Riot as they slept. A few were awake, like the group who was plotting at the table in the early morning. A few times the alarm was raised, but we were gone before anyone else could stir and respond. To cap off our evening, we set fire to the daywatch barracks, trying to catch as many sleeping soldiers as possible. By the time we holed up in an abandoned church, the gong of the fire alarm was ringing as we fell into a deep sleep.

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I lie on a rafter high above the pews, where Taur and Liana are sleeping. The bull man has lent Liana his fur cape, which she wraps tightly around her as she turns to sleep on her side. The big man stirs, but does not sit straight up. Instead, he cautiously peers over the pews, scanning the interior of the chapel before he decides it's safe to rise.

Seeing that he's awake, I crawl over the rafter, then down the wall.

“It's night again,” he says in a whisper as he rises and stretches. “I needed that sleep. And I'm starving.”

I am walking to him, coming between the pews carrying in my beak a satchel that I have filled with food.

The horned man eagerly takes the bag from me. Grabbing an apple, he bites into it, eating half of it in a single bite, seeds and all. In a second bite he eats the rest and spits the stem onto the aisle.

“Save some for me,” Liana protests, wrapping the fur cloak around her as she approaches.

Taur removes a fruit and hands the albino girl the bag. He bites into it, and freezes. He looks at me without chewing. “A turnip?”

You never realize how important lips are to facial expression until you're lipless. I want to purse my lips, but realize I can't, so I wave my tail behind me. “Sorry, I couldn't exactly go to the market, so I had to 'liberate' what I could.”

The giant man shrugs and finishes eating the turnip, chewing and bolting it down. “So how many gods do you believe in?”

“Just one,” I tell Taur, who is back to rummaging through the sack. “There can be only one God who created everything.”

Liana gestures with an orange. “But you've talked about God the Healer, God the Empowerer, God the Protector, Lord Riyel...”

“Saint Janith,” I add. “They're all facets of the same person. Just like you can be a father, someone's son, and a soldier all at the same time.”

“So what happened to this church?” Taur takes the bag from Liana, who needs her hands free to peel the orange. He looks inside, and then offers me the bag.

“No, thanks. I just had several moths up in the rafters.” I look up above and wave with my tail. “People fall away, just stop believing. They want to be free, have sex and drugs as they want, abandon children and spouses when it's convenient, and imagine that they know enough that the idea of God is backward and superstitious. They have other things to do. Fewer and fewer people attend, until the church is empty.”

“But what takes its place?” Liana asks, taking the satchels from Taur and reaching down into the bottom with her slender fingers.

The two of them sit on one of the wooden benches, but I'm not designed for sitting, so I stand.

“That's a good question,” I tell the two, who are dividing a piece of dried meat. “As someone said, 'When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything.' I've seen people worshiping a bull, cavorting with temple prostitutes, getting high on a flesh-eating drug, and people in this city seem to think they're snakes.”

“And the women here are ugly,” Taur shakes his head so his horns wave from side to side. “In Baalrik...”

“Saint Janith,” Liana corrects him.

“Uh, Saint Janith,” the bull man continues in his deep voice, “there were beautiful women. The temple prostitutes were heavily painted, yes, but you could see that they were pretty, and the new ones sure were. But here, the women are hideous.”

“What about albinos? You can't say they're pretty.” Liana looks at Taur from the side of her eyes as she gnaws on a bit of dried meat.

“You're a beautiful young lady,” I tell her. “Keep that in mind.”

“You say that, but you're a lizard.” Her cheek draws one corner of her her lip back in an expression of doubt as her pale hand comes up to cover the ornamental scars on her back.

“I was a man once, and he's still in here somewhere.” My tail curves around my body to point at my torso.

“You are pretty,” Taur tells her, causing her to blush as he reaches for the satchel.

“God the Healer made everything beautiful, and when you abandon God, you embrace ugliness.” I look up through the skylight and see that the crescent moon is just a sliver now. “I say we rest up, and at dawn we resume our battle.”

* * *

“Are you the lizard who blasphemed the goddess Ashera?” a woman yells at me, making spiking motions with her index finger. She has the same cheesy scale tattoos, only her hair has been dyed green, and shaved on one side to display the scale tattoos on the bald half of her skull. A skewer runs through both nostrils and pierces her septum.

“Kill him!” an obese woman shrieks.

“He's the lizard from hell!” a soft flabby guy yells.

“Technically, it's purgatory,” I counter, and wonder how he knows that. “By the way, Ashera isn't a goddess; she's a demon.”

“You wanna die, blasphemer?” The green haired monstrosity is in my face.

She has no idea how many times I wanted to die, prayed I'd die, but couldn't manage it, no matter how hard I tried. “Actually, if you killed me you'd be doing me a huge favor. You're just jealous that I'm a real reptile, and you're all nothing but fakes.”

“I am a serpent! The goddess has made me a serpent!” There is spittle on the mouth of the green haired woman in my face.

“Kill him!” The fat woman shouts, and she's clearly fixated on killing and food, although not necessarily in that order. She waves a bloated hand, the fingers of which have been sewn together.

“Look, lady, as long as you're having surgery done on yourself, you should have your stomach stapled,” I tell the fat beast, then turn to Green Hair. “Are those jailhouse tattoos? With the scales, I thought you were doing some kind of fish costume.”

Green hair throws her head back, raising her mouth to the sky, letting out a long, inarticulate wail. She turns to glare at me and her eyes narrow. She's sneering, revealing teeth that have all been ground into the form of canines.

“They're coming, all of them, and they're heavily armed,” she snarls. “They'll cut you to pieces while we watch.”

All of them are ecstatic. They've convinced themselves that I am full of hate, and these people are so opposed to hate in any form that they want to kill me.