Dark Wings, Bright Flame Read online

  But every so often, he would stop by for a visit, and interview the people staying at the shelter. Nothing formal, just a chat. Enough to get a sense of their pasts, and their hopes and dreams. And then he would choose a candidate or two to meet with in person, and offer them one-on-one counseling to help them get back on their feet.

  Dennis had specific criteria he used to select his candidates. As best I could tell, those criteria were that they had to be young, female, and attractive. And they had to have made enough of a mess of their lives that no one would think anything of it when they simply failed to return to the shelter one day.

  Dennis sat down across from the woman. “Tell me, Marina,” he said, leaning in toward her like she was the most important person in the universe, “if you could have anything, what would you choose? Don’t be afraid to dream big. That’s what we’re here for.”

  Marina. Yes. That was her name. I remembered her from the shelter now. The one who had lost her children after her last fling with heroin. She was clean now, she had insisted. For good this time. Behind her back, the shelter workers had cast each other jaded looks, and placed bets on how long it would take before another needle found its way into her arm. Dennis had pretended he hadn’t heard, but I had seen him listening.

  Marina shook her head. “I… I don’t even know. It used to be that I couldn’t think beyond getting my kids back. Now it’s hard to imagine even that much.”

  I didn’t know why she was having such a hard time answering. The details might have differed, but deep down, all our desires—whether human, demon, or angel—came down to the same two things. Freedom. And justice.

  “It’s all right,” said Dennis. “There’s no need to answer right away. We’ll take it slow. For now, why don’t you make yourself at home? Take off your coat. Have a drink of water.”

  He pushed the water across the table to her. The one on the right. He always put the tainted one on the right. Every time, I wished he would make a mistake. But Dennis was a man who paid attention to the small details.

  I wrapped my hands around his neck, and wished I could squeeze. His pulse pounded against my fingers, quick and eager. He tilted his head up and let out a long, slow breath of satisfaction. As if he could feel me there. As if he knew he was under God’s protection.

  Marina took a long drink of the water. She made a face. She peered into the glass and frowned.

  Maybe she would listen to her instincts, and run. None of the others had, but she could be the first. If she left now, she might be able to get far enough away before it took effect.

  Instead, she looked down at that career book again. She set the glass down with a shrug.

  Dennis wasn’t looking at her like she was the center of the universe anymore. He didn’t need to. He stared over her head, watching the clock. Counting seconds. Marking time.

  Marina didn’t seem to notice. “Just the fact that you asked to meet with me gives me hope.” Her voice was already sounding a little slurred. “Everyone has written me off for so long. I was starting to believe everything they said about me. But when you looked at me, you saw something more.” She blinked, and blinked again, trying to focus her eyes.

  It still might not be too late. She didn’t need to get far, as long as she made it to where somebody could see her. I crossed over to the other side of the desk, and squeezed her shoulder hard enough that it should have hurt. It would have hurt, if I hadn’t been on duty, the guardian mantle rendering me invisible to human senses.

  I screamed in her ear, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me. “Run!” She didn’t even flinch.

  Dennis gave her a warm, paternal smile. “Do you want to know what I saw in you?” He leaned in toward her, and tilted her chin up with his finger. “A drug-addicted whore no one would miss.”

  Marina’s defocused eyes widened. “What…”

  That was as far as she got. Her head slumped forward. Dennis caught her before she hit the desk.

  He lowered her head gently. Then he stood, and scooped her into his arms in a practiced motion. He was facing a window, but there was nothing furtive about his movements. He strode with confidence to the basement door, the smile never leaving his face.

  And why shouldn’t he be confident? He had God on his side.

  If there were any justice in heaven or earth, someone would have passed by the window right then. Some passerby would have found themselves drawn to the building, sensing that something was wrong.

  But God cared nothing for justice. All he cared about was worship and praise to feed his oversized ego. The humans who gave him what he wanted, who showered him in songs of his greatness and glory, earned his protection. No matter what they got up to when they weren’t singing.

  In heaven, it was the same. The angels who knelt the lowest before his throne, and spoke the sweetest words, got to laze about in heaven with their golden harps and ceremonial swords. The rest of us? We got jobs like this.

  Dennis started up his whistling again as he carried Marina down the basement stairs. He laid her down on the plastic sheeting with the greatest of care. She moaned softly, like she was having a bad dream.

  He knelt and brushed her hair back from her face. “Hush now, it’s all right,” he murmured. “It will all be over soon.”

  He ran his hands over his tools, pausing first on one, then another. Trying to figure out what to break first. His smile grew unfocused as he lost himself in his dreams. His whistling lost its tune. His eyes drifted shut.

  That wasn’t like him. Normally, at this point in the process, his eyes were bright and eager, as the basement and his anticipation lent him a surge of energy.

  He was savoring the moment, I told myself. Nothing to worry about. There were no threats here.

  Dennis slumped forward. He barely thrust his hand out in time to keep himself from pitching forward on the concrete. He gave a choked gasp that turned into a wheeze.

  He was overexcited, that was all. He had gone too long between victims, and let the hunger build up too much. It would pass.

  I might have believed my own lies if I hadn’t caught a hint of something on the air, underneath the scent of pine. A whiff of expensive cologne.

  It always hurt when the power took control of me. I had once seen a human walk outside after a storm, and set his foot down on a live wire without seeing it. I imagined it had felt something like this.

  Before I was consciously aware of it, I had drawn my sword of lightning out of the ether. I spun to face the source of the smell. My eyes locked on to the demon, who was nothing more than a wisp of smoke with a pair of obsidian eyes. That same smoke was pouring into Dennis’s nose and mouth, choking him, turning his eyes glassy and his face red. All the things I had worked so hard not to see.

  The demon froze as our eyes met. I didn’t. The power that had me in its grip wouldn’t let me. I drove the sword deep into his smoky form. His eyes went wide as he resolidified around the blade. In less than the span of a heartbeat, his body had returned, the same one he had worn in the bar.

  Dennis doubled over coughing. He stood, shaking his head, brushing himself off. He looked around, like he was trying to get his bearings, and stared right through us without seeing either of us.

  I—or the power controlling me—drove the sword deeper into the demon’s gut. I had missed his heart, on account of him not having one at the time. But this would kill him all the same. It would just take a little longer.

  “I told you not to let me see you,” I growled as I twisted the blade.

  Black blood gushed from the demon’s mouth as he snarled at me. “I should have known better than to trust an angel.” The words came out garbled and choked, punctuated by another thick mouthful of blood.

  “It’s not me.” Another twist. “I didn’t want this.”

  The demon chuckled wetly. “It’s easy to think that, isn’t it? But whose choice was it to stay and kiss the feet of the man upstairs? Whose choice was it to let him hang that mantle on you?”
He shook his head slowly, almost pityingly. “You chose weakness. You chose cowardice. If you were strong—” He hacked out another gush of blood. “If you were strong, you would have fallen.”

  With another snarl, he shoved himself forward on the sword. His fingers elongated into knifelike black claws.

  I pulled back just in time to avoid the swipe. With a wet sizzle, the sword pulled free. Another gush of black blood came with it. It dribbled down to stain the basement floor, but Dennis would never see it. The same magic that hid the two of us from him now would keep him up forever oblivious to the demonic stain. Not that his basement wasn’t already stained enough with evil.

  Oblivious to the fight taking place mere inches from his nose, he smiled down at his prisoner. It looked as though he had already recovered from his brief ordeal. All the time and planning that had gone into my attempt on his life, and this was what it had come to. A few seconds of fear for him, the death of a demon who deserved it less than he did, and a stain on his floor that he would never notice.

  Dennis bent down and picked up a slim, curved knife. He ran a finger over the blade, and ran his eyes slowly over Marina’s exposed skin. Searching for the exact right spot to begin.

  I didn’t want to see. I had watched the same scene play out too many times already. Fortunately, I had other things occupying my attention.

  The demon and I circled each other. He was holding his guts in with one hand, but if he knew how bad the damage was, he didn’t seem to care. His eyes shone with a wild light. He gave a rattling hiss as he held his other hand up, claws at the ready.

  It made sense, in a way, that he would choose to fight rather than run. He had to know that if he ran, the guardian mantle would make me chase him. He knew, too, that he wouldn’t survive another strike from the sword. And he was aware of what it would do to him. He must have decided that if he was going down either way, he might as well at least bring me down with him.

  Which was hardly fair of him. He had known what it meant to go up against a guardian angel. I had warned him myself. There was no sense in him blaming me for it, when I wasn’t in control of my own actions. If I were, I would turn around right now and drive my sword through Dennis’s heart.

  Weak. The demon’s accusation drummed like a heartbeat against the inside of my skull. You chose weakness. You chose cowardice. Weak. Weak. Weak.

  For the first time in my long existence, I reached for the mantle instead of fighting it. I lost myself in it, letting it drown out the demon’s voice with its own. Kill him, urged the power thrumming through me. Destroy the threat.

  And I would. I would obey; I would always obey. I had no choice.

  I was weak. I always had been.

  I would do what God required of me. I just had to wait for the right moment.

  Our circles grew tighter and tenser. The demon slashed out with his claws again. The razor tips came inches from my heart.

  Almost. Almost. Now.

  Destroy the threat, the power inside me sang. And I sang along with it, a howl of triumph and helpless fury.

  I drew the sword back—and ran it through the demon’s heart.

  His snarling fury turned to mute shock. But only for an instant, before his features melted into a blur of smoke and shadow. The rest of his body followed. Through his translucent form, I could make out the dark outlines of Dennis standing behind him and the unconscious Marina on the floor. The smoke lightened to a pale gray, then drifted away on a nonexistent breeze. The last thing to go were his eyes, dark and accusing.

  Then they, too, melted into nothing, and he was gone.

  Leaving me with a clear view of Dennis, directly behind him, impaled on my sword.

  The sword had gone through his back, and come out through the center of his ribcage. He looked down at himself, and made a choked, disbelieving noise. I wondered what was going through his mind as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing—a hole in his chest, a blinding pain, and nothing visible to cause either one.

  Then again, I didn’t much care what he was thinking.

  He slumped forward on the blade. The noises stopped. I shook him free, and stared down at his crumpled form, hardly able to believe my own triumph.

  The moment the mantle had taken hold of me, I had known I wouldn’t be able to stop it from doing its work. But as the demon and I had circled each other, his voice pulsing in my brain, it had occurred to me that maybe I didn’t have to stop. Maybe all I had to do was outsmart it.

  I had waited for the exact right moment, until the demon was directly in front of Dennis. Until the same strike would kill them both. Then I had zeroed in on the threat to Dennis’s life with singular focus, letting the mantle’s own power distract me from Dennis himself for the split second it had taken to run them both through.

  The odds of it working had been one in a million. But then, I’d had nothing to lose.

  I let the sword fall from my hand. I wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

  Marina was still unconscious, whimpering in her restless dreams. She would wake into a worse nightmare than whatever scenes were playing behind her eyes. I wanted to carry her out of here, and take her someplace safe. Dennis could no longer harm her body, but if she woke up here, even in death he would leave a scar on her soul. I would have spared her that if I could have.

  But I already knew I wouldn’t have time. A sound was growing all around me—a whispering hiss of flame.

  There was only one place for an angel who defied heaven.

  The screams of the damned, as faint and eerie as the winter wind outside, howled through the room. Marina frowned and shifted restlessly.

  A portal yawned open at my feet. Heat blasted my face. The whisper of the flames became a crackle and a roar. But when I looked down, all I could see was darkness.

  Had this been what I was afraid of for so long? Was this the threat that had made me accept the power bestowed upon me, and use it to protect so many monsters in human skin? Down in that pit, at least the evil was out in the open. I could hear it in those screams, and in the hungry growls that followed. What I didn’t hear was a single cheerful whistle.

  I was weak. I always had been. But that would change. The fall wouldn’t kill me; the lake of fire would spit me into the rocky pits of hell, as it had every fallen angel before me—charred and flightless, but still alive. But it would burn the weakness from me first.

  And to survive in hell, I would need to become stronger still. It would harden me into what I needed to become. What I should have become long ago.

  A guardian.

  Like the demon in the bar, I intended to find more for myself in hell then pain and suffering. But unlike him, I wouldn’t satisfy myself with lurking in bars, ensnaring easy targets for the sake of whatever scraps the lords of hell might toss me. I already had my thoughts set on higher things.

  Heavenly things.

  And I had an angel feather in my pocket.

  I would let hell forge me into someone worthy of my desires. And once it did, God himself wouldn’t be safe from me.

  I didn’t wait for the portal to pull me in. I stared down into the black depths with a feral grin, and jumped.

  There was no justice in heaven or earth. But I would change that.

  Be Not Afraid

  As Eremiel crouched in the dead grass, with his wings pulled tightly around the still form in front of him, screams of pain and defiance echoed from all directions. A burst of gunfire rattled his eardrums, followed by a distant explosion. A bullet ripped through his wing, sending a flurry of mud-caked feathers into the air. The smell of blood and charred feathers choked him.

  He couldn’t see. And not only because of the dust that stung his eyes. Whenever he tried to focus on anything—the battle in front of him, the pale figure lying in the circle of his wings—the scene blurred and shifted. For a second, the hillside was empty, the scraggly brown grass untouched by boots and tire treads, the sky a calm clear blue. The single pitted road was empty, without a s
ingle car as far as he could see. But despite the silence that threatened to close in on him, he knew people were screaming and dying all around him. He knew it.

  One of the screams in his ears belonged to Alex, even though Alex was dead. He tightened his wings around his charge, his friend. His wings closed on nothing.

  Protect him, the echo of Alex’s voice begged. I don’t matter. Protect him.

  Eremiel had tried. The man Alex had called him here for, the man whose name Eremiel didn’t even know, lay a few feet away. Dead from the gunfire that had ripped through Eremiel’s tattered wings.

  Protect her. Please. Keep her safe.

  Wait. Her?

  The dusty air swirled around him in a cyclone—the familiar feeling of being called. He clenched his fists, and dug his heels into the dirt. “No,” he ground out. “Not yet. I’m not done here.”

  The words sounded familiar in his ears. Too familiar. He had resisted the pull before, kept himself from being tugged from this same hill. At least once, maybe twice, maybe more. How many had there been? How long had this battle been raging?

  The gunfire stopped. The screams went silent. The hill was empty. Brown grass blew softly in the breeze.

  And then the hill was gone, and there was nothing left but the whirling winds.

  “No! Alex!” His voice was rough from screaming. How long had he been calling Alex’s name?

  Another scream answered his. But the sound was all wrong. The voice was high and shrill—a child. There had been no children on the battlefield.

  He closed his eyes against the cruel tearing winds. When he opened them again, the world wasn’t blurry anymore. The girl in front of him was as crisp as a photograph. She was five, maybe six, the age Alex had been when he had first called Eremiel to him with his prayer for somebody, anybody, to protect him from his father’s rage. A pudgy snowman grinned out at Eremiel from her sweatshirt. Her hair was in pigtails, each of them tied off with a red ribbon like twin Christmas bows.