Dark Wings, Bright Flame Read online

  His wing jerked forward. It slammed into the man, harder than any human could have struck him. He hit the wall with a crack as sharp as a gunshot. He left a man-sized dent as he slid down to the floor.

  Eremiel stared at what he had done, as Mia’s father looked up at him in wordless shock. His kind did not engage in violence. Except he just had. And he felt no guilt for what he had done.

  Mia’s father opened and closed his mouth a few times. Finally, he managed a few stammering words. “You’re… you’re a… what are you?”

  Eremiel crossed the room with slow, deliberate steps. He loomed over the man, his torn and bloody wings stretched high. “I am an angel of protection. And this girl is under mine. Do not come near this apartment again.”

  He saw his own reflection in the man’s glassy eyes. The tattered wings, the blood. The pain etched into his face. But he didn’t look broken and defeated. He looked like a warrior. Not the serene protector he had always been, but someone to be feared.

  Mia’s father nodded frantically, his bravado gone as if it had never existed. He struggled to his feet, one arm curled around what Eremiel suspected was a broken rib. Without another word, he turned and dashed from the room. A few seconds later, the apartment door slammed behind him.

  The man had imagined himself strong, but cruelty and strength weren’t the same thing. Alex, now—Alex had been strong. He hadn’t run from his fight. And he had died exactly the way he would have wanted to. Protecting another, the way he himself had been protected all his life.

  Eremiel turned to face Janice and Mia. Despite his appearance, and despite what he had done, neither of them had any fear in their eyes. Even the constant shadow he had recognized in Janice’s expression was gone.

  “You did it,” Janice breathed, like she was still trying to believe it.

  “If he comes back,” said Eremiel, “call to me again. I will answer.”

  “We don’t have a way to thank you properly,” said Janice. “But… you’re welcome to stay for dinner. We were just going to have leftovers, but I can scrounge up something special instead. And we were planning on baking our first Christmas cookies of the year afterward.”

  “We cut them into shapes,” Mia added, her eyes still shining with awe. “You can have all the angel ones.”

  The thought made him pause. He had never seen humans during the ordinary happy moments of their lives. He only ever came to them in the moment of their greatest fear, and their greatest need. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to see another side of life for a change. And maybe, after fighting the same battle in his head for years upon years, he had earned an angel-shaped cookie, and a few minutes of warmth that didn’t come from a punishing sun.

  He opened his mouth to say yes. But before he could, a sharp wind brushed at his arms, and made the fabric of his suit ripple even though nothing else in the room was moving. As the air spun faster around him, his chest ached with a familiar tug. He was being called.

  Someone else needed him. This time, he wouldn’t resist. He would protect them without hesitation and without fear. He would live up to Alex’s example.

  He couldn’t offer them the calm, steady strength that had once been his. But after what had happened here tonight, he had a feeling that whoever had sent out this cry for help didn’t need him calm. They needed him fierce and angry, with none of his scars hidden and none of his pain smoothed away. And that… that, he could do.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m needed elsewhere.”

  Mia’s face fell. But then she smiled at him. “We’ll save a cookie for you. I’ll put it at the top of the tree, right by the angel. Will you come get it?”

  The whirling of the air grew stronger. The bedroom blurred around him. But in the moment before the next prayer pulled him away, he promised, “I will.”

  A Spark of Light

  I smiled and leaned into the breeze as it blew across the bridge from the river, driving away the smell of exhaust with the thick, loamy scent of the water. On nights like this, with the air heavy and wild, and the drone and blare of traffic mere background noise, I almost felt free. The sun hung in the sky like a bloody eye as it prepared to sink below the horizon, but I met its stare without blinking. I had nothing to fear.

  It was the perfect weather for walking. The air was cool enough to dry the day’s sweat, but not so cold that I had needed to dig my fall jacket out from the closet, not yet. I was surprised—but happily so—that I was the only one out on the footpath tonight.

  The road over the bridge was a different story. Traffic inched forward as everyone raced at turtle speed to be the first ones home from their dead-end jobs. Half the drivers leaned on their horns as traffic jerked to a halt before it started crawling forward again, while the other half held it up further with bored glances at their phones. But the grimy, grumpy press of humanity wasn’t my problem. Not tonight, not ever again. I drew in another deep, satisfied breath and walked at an easy pace, alone in the world.

  No—not alone. One other person was out on the footpath tonight. I could only make out his silhouette in the red glow of the sunset, but I could see the way his head was tilted up into the sky, his mouth moving like he was having a one-way conversation with the air. He dropped his eyes, and shook his head slightly.

  Then he started climbing the railing.

  The thought crossed my mind that I didn’t have to keep going. I could turn around and go for a leisurely stroll through downtown instead, maybe get myself a gelato at the new place that had opened last week. I could tell myself, and anyone who asked, that I had never seen him. If I passed him, I would have to stop, and then I would have to say something. But why should I? If this stranger was weak enough and selfish enough to jump, that wasn’t my problem, any more than the traffic was.

  That was what I told myself, anyway. But I knew better. Even as I thought wistfully about turning around, obligation pulled at me like a tether. I sped up to a jog, then a full run. “Wait!” I yelled, but the honking horns swallowed my words before they could make it to the stranger.

  No drivers glanced up from the road, either at my voice or at the sight of him. But even though I had been sure he couldn’t hear me, he stopped. With one foot up on the railing, he looked me up and down, taking my measure. Trying to decide whether I was worth interrupting his plans for. I knew I wouldn’t get there in time, that I wouldn’t reach him before he decided I wasn’t worth it.

  But he lowered his foot, and turned to face me.

  I screeched to a halt in front of him, panting. “Don’t…” I gasped for air, and made a mental note to start up a workout routine. I had let myself get lazy, living in the lap of luxury these past few years. “Don’t jump.”

  He regarded me with an expression that was almost pitying. “And what reason do you plan to offer me?” he asked. “Do you intend to tell me there is still good in this world? Do you really believe that?” The man barely looked thirty, but his voice was immeasurably old and weary.

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter much to me one way or the other. What I believe is that running away is the coward’s way out.”

  “And how much pain have you seen in your life, to make that determination? How long have you been swimming against the current, fighting for the good against a tide of darkness?” He shook his head slowly. “How old are you? Twenty-five? Thirty?”

  “Older than that.”

  “A few decades, then.” He let out a thin, exhausted sigh. “I felt the same as you once, when I was a child.”

  I wanted to point out the obvious, which was that he didn’t look any older than me. But something about the weight he gave the words, and his faded blue eyes that looked like they should have belonged on his great-great-grandfather, gave me pause. I closed my mouth, and studied him more closely.

  That was when I saw the feathers poking out from under his long coat.

  He saw where my gaze had gone, and tried to angle his body away to hide what I had seen. Before he could, I darted ou
t my arm, and tugged up the bottom of his coat—just enough to reveal the tips of the wings underneath. They looked like they had started out as a brilliant white, once upon a time, but now they were gray with the dust of the city. They seemed to sit at an unnatural angle, pressed too tightly to his body.

  He jerked away, but not fast enough. Before I could ask my question, he shrugged the coat from his shoulders with a sigh. He stripped off his shirt next. He turned to face the road, so none of the commuters would see what he was showing me—although I doubted any of them would notice regardless.

  The wings stretched up from the tips of his shoulders down almost to his knees. I imagined they would stretch long enough to block out the sun if he unfurled them. But he couldn’t. They were bound tightly to his body with thick, rough twine that dug into his flesh as it wrapped around his chest.

  He looked faintly abashed as he met my eyes. “If my wings were free,” he said quietly, “I would instinctively catch myself as I fell.”

  “What are you?” I breathed.

  He regarded me seriously. “I think you know.”

  He was right—I had asked the question because it was the expected thing to ask, not because I had needed to hear the answer. I had never been religious, but just like I didn’t need religion to understand that the devil was a real presence in the world, I also didn’t need it to recognize an angel when I saw one.

  The sight of his wings filled me with a dark, deep anger. “So you’re an immortal being of light. Stronger and more noble than any of us weak humans. Isn’t that how it works? And you still can’t see any other option but this?” I shook my head. “You know what? Go right ahead. Do whatever you want.”

  I turned and started walking away, the way I should have done from the start.

  My footsteps landed on the concrete with a staccato rhythm. I fixed my mind on the sweet treat I would buy for myself, and on the weather that had done so much to lift my mood a few short minutes ago. I tried to block the angel from my thoughts.

  I heard shoe leather meet metal as he started climbing the railing again. I didn’t turn around.

  But in my mind’s eye, I saw him anyway. Plunging into the water, wings bound and helpless. A spark of light disappearing without a trace.

  I don’t remember deciding to turn around. One minute I was walking away, and the next, I was racing toward him, calling out for him to stop, to wait. But this time, he didn’t listen.

  He stood atop the railing, the bloody smears of the sunset streaking out in all directions around him, and for a second, I thought he would fly.

  Then he closed his eyes and let himself fall forward.

  I lunged for him. My fingers brushed his jacket, an instant before it slipped from my grip. But my fingers closed around something else. The twine. I grabbed on tight, ignoring the burning as it scraped down my palm, and pulled.

  If he had tied it a little tighter, I would have plunged over the edge after him, pulled down by his weight. But when I caught hold of the twine, his body kept on moving. The twine scraped down his skin, leaving angry trails of blood, and a handful of feathers fluttered down. He slipped free of the rope, and the weight on my hands abruptly eased as I was left holding what felt like nothing but empty air.

  His wings burst free and spread out to catch him. He hung suspended in the air, the dirty white of his feathers shimmering red in the sunset.

  He was magnificent.

  He turned and sailed over the edge of the railing to land beside me. Traffic didn’t come to a halt. No one slammed into the divider at the sight of him. No one even seemed to be looking at all.

  He blinked, like he had woken too early from a dream. Slowly, his eyes focused on me, like he was seeing me for the first time.

  “Grab a bite to eat with me,” I offered. “We’ll talk. After that, if you still feel like jumping, you don’t need to worry about me stepping in to save you a second time.”

  His lips quirked up in the hint of a smile. “Since my plans for the evening appear to have been canceled,” he said, “I may as well take you up on that.”

  * * *

  The angel’s wings were no longer bound, but he kept them tucked tightly under his coat, not visible unless someone were to look closely. And no one looked closely. Everyone in the gelato shop was wrapped up in their own personal drama, from the first-date couple staring into each other’s eyes to the two teenage girls giving each other the cold shoulder while a parent fruitlessly tried to mediate.

  I pushed his gelato—plain vanilla, his choice—across the table to him, and took a small bite of my own bowl of pistachio. He looked down at his bowl, but didn’t taste it. Instead, he leaned across the table, and stared into my eyes with an intensity that made me want to turn away.

  “I would like the answer to a question, if you would oblige me,” he said. “Why did you turn around, after you had already announced your intention to leave me to my fate? Why did you save me?”

  “How about you tell me why you were there in the first place?” I countered. “Why would an angel try to kill himself? And would it even have worked? You’re not alive the way we would think of it. Not physically. Right?”

  He made a waffling motion with his hand. “When I am on the material plane, I have a material body. And that body is as vulnerable to damage as yours. I would not have died in the way a human does, it’s true. But my body would have been destroyed, and with it, every memory I’ve formed since the last time I arrived in the material realm.”

  “And how long ago was that?”

  “Nine hundred years.”

  The claim should have made me want to laugh. The man still looked barely thirty. But with his eyes staring into mine, I could believe it. His gaze felt like a deep well I could fall into and never escape. Or maybe a black hole. The density of wisdom there, and of pain, was something we humans could never develop in our brief lifespans.

  I broke our gaze. “So you’d throw away almost a thousand years, just like that?”

  “I don’t need to tell you what your world is like,” he said. “Selfishness, greed, apathy—a dark tide that creeps higher every day. Some people imagine my kind are sent to your realm to protect you from harm. They imagine us healing their sicknesses, and shoving them of the out of the path of speeding cars. In reality, we are here for one reason only—to increase the amount of goodness in the world. And only one definition of goodness has any meaning: humans treating each other well. Acting with selflessness, with kindness. Caring for one another.” His voice roughened. “For nine hundred years, I’ve tried to turn back the tide. But every day, it comes closer to swallowing me. When you have fought a doomed battle for that long, then you can talk to me about what I would be throwing away.”

  “Then you’ve lost faith.”

  He gave a long sigh. “I… suppose you could see it that way. If not in the one who sent me here, then perhaps in humanity itself. I’ve tried my best to hold the despair at bay, but I won’t deny that every day it becomes harder to fight, and to care about the fight.”

  “You don’t want to do it anymore,” I said. “It feels pointless. A whole lot of effort for no reward. Nine hundred years, and you’ve accomplished nothing. Less than nothing. All you’ve done is watch the world take one step backward after another.”

  The angel gave me a small smile. “If your intention was to talk me out of the desire to return to the bridge, human, you have chosen your strategy poorly.”

  I took another nibble of my gelato, and let the delicate nutty sweetness melt on my tongue. “What if I told you there was another option?”

  His brows drew together in a confused frown. Then understanding dawned. His breath slowly hissed out. “Ah. I see.”

  “You might not die the way we do,” I said, “but it really would be like death, wouldn’t it, to lose the past nine hundred years? I know how much we humans change over a few short decades. I’m sure you aren’t the same person you were when you first came here. Not to mention the fact tha
t with no memory, you might not know better than to say yes when asked to take on the same mission again.” This time I was the one to catch his gaze. “No wonder it’s taken you so long to look for a way out. But your choices aren’t just to either die or keep fighting the same futile war. There’s another way.”

  He held up a hand. “There is no need to elaborate, human. I know what you are offering me.” I felt him taking my measure again, like when I had first called out to him on the bridge. “It was no coincidence that you were out walking tonight, then.”

  I paused before answering, choosing my words carefully. “I was told there would be an opportunity. One that would lead to a handsome reward for me, if I played my cards right. I’m talking a private island, and three hundred more years of youth. But that was all I knew. I didn’t know the person I was sent for would be a jumper, and even when I saw you, I thought you were human. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of your wings that I understood why the reward was so high.”

  “I assume this reward is contingent on you tempting me to your side.” I could already hear the no on his lips.

  “I don’t have to tempt you. You’re already there. You said so yourself—you’ve lost faith, given up on humanity. All we’re asking is for you to formalize the arrangement.”

  He stirred his gelato, forming peaks and valleys in the thick whiteness. “I imagine you want a little more from me than that. I would be expected to do my part for your master, to increase the pain and cruelty in the world.” He paused. “Just as you do.”

  I acknowledged both parts of his statement with a nod. “You would only be nudging them toward what they would do anyway, with or without your help,” I pointed out. I offered him a smile. “And wouldn’t it be nice not to fight against the tide, for once?”

  He let out a long breath, and set his spoon down. “I admit,” he said, almost too quietly for me to hear, “this would not be the first time I have considered such an arrangement. I have wondered, from time to time, what I would say when your kind came knocking. And I never did come to a satisfactory conclusion.”