by Zoe Cannon
Maybe there was hope after all. I smiled to myself. I could already feel the sand of my own private beach under my toes.
“But now I wonder,” he continued, “would I truly be happy with that decision? Would contributing to the darkness I have watched overtake the world for centuries be better than fighting against it, however futile my efforts have been?”
“Could it be worse than where you are now?” I countered.
He looked up, and held my gaze again. The world seemed to contract until there was nothing left but the black hole of his blue eyes. This time, when I tried to look away, I couldn’t.
“Tell me, are you happy, Rachel Elwing of Highland Street?” he asked quietly. “Did your vengeance ease your grief? Do your youth and riches satisfy you?”
I rocked back as if he had slammed a fist into my chest.
“Is that some kind of angelic power?” I asked when I could breathe again. “You can see inside my head, and know who I am? If that’s the case, why did you listen to me when I first tried to stop you?”
A smile played around the corners of his lips. “I knew who you were before then, Rachel.”
It took me a few seconds to understand what he meant. This whole thing was a setup. The enemy had baited me out. This wasn’t how it was supposed to work between us—our side and his each acted on the hearts of humans, but aside from the occasional offer like the one I was here to extend, we didn’t engage in direct confrontations with each other. And because he had already broken the rules, I didn’t know the script for what would happen next. Was he planning to take out a flaming sword and chop off my head?
I pushed my chair back and rose to my feet. I grabbed the closest thing to hand, then looked down and realized I had chosen a plastic spoon as my weapon.
But he didn’t laugh. And he didn’t pull a sword from his coat. He only looked at me with pity in his eyes. “You have misread my intentions, Rachel. I did not bring you here to fight.”
If he said anything else after that, I didn’t hear it. I was already running out the door.
* * *
I should have thought harder about the futility of trying to outrun someone who could fly.
When I burst into my penthouse apartment, he was already there. He stood in front of the floor-length window that took up the entire far wall, the last of the sunset fading into darkness behind his wings. He didn’t say a word, only watched me enter as if this were his home, and I were the intruder here.
“Get out,” I snapped.
He didn’t move. “You never answered my question. Is what you received worth it?” He ran a finger along the back of my sofa, like he was testing the quality of the leather. “Your youth has been extended for decades, with the promise of decades more. You have money and material comforts enough to provide for your every need, and all your wants besides. You have been given a great deal in exchange for, as you say, simply nudging people toward what they would have done anyway. So tell me, are you happy with your choice?”
I wanted to close my eyes and block out every sight of the wealth around me. The sofa he was fondling, crafted from the softest leather. The window that let me look down over the city like a queen staring down at her subjects. The priceless pieces of jewelry lying out in plain sight on a table by the door—I had placed them there in an effort to entice myself to wear them, but I never had.
“If you’ve really looked into me as much as you want me to think you have,” I said, “you should know that’s not the reason I made the deal.”
“Then tell me about the part that matters to you,” he said. “The revenge on the one responsible for your children’s deaths. When you saw his house burning, when you heard his screams, were you happy then? Were you satisfied?”
“Why should I answer any of your questions? You’ve been manipulating me from the beginning. You never planned on jumping, did you? You knew my history, and saw a button you could press.” I made a sharp noise in the back of my throat. “And yet you’re supposed to be on the side of good.”
“You still have it wrong,” he said. “Yes, I drew you out deliberately. And no, the connection to your own history did not escape my notice. But I did not formulate the plan myself. I only volunteered. And I volunteered because…” He paused. I wasn’t sure whether he looked embarrassed, or just tired. “Because a part of me was hoping you would refuse to intervene, and I could take the excuse to finally forget everything I have seen, everything I have done and failed to do. But if an agent for the other side could be turned, I thought perhaps it could prove there was still some good left in humanity.”
“And if you can’t turn me?” I asked.
His smile held no small amount of sadness this time. “You did promise not to stop me a second time.”
“You’d really rather lose everything than let things be easy for once?”
“Yes.” His answer came without hesitation. For the first time, I could see something in him besides exhaustion and sadness. A genuine fire, sputtering at first and then flaring to life. “That is not in question. Now that deception is no longer necessary, do not mention your offer to me again.”
“But why? Why struggle like that when you don’t have to? It isn’t as if you’re accomplishing anything here, and you know it.”
“I think you already know the answer to that. I think you know every time you look around at your worthless baubles.”
I turned so I couldn’t see the unworn jewelry taunting me. “I told you, it was never about any of that.”
“I think you know,” he said, more quietly, “every time you think about the fire that consumed the man who killed your children, and wish it had meant something to you.”
For a second, I saw flames behind my eyes, and caught a whiff of smoke on the air. I felt the familiar numbness in my heart, the same hollow emptiness I had felt staring out at the flames.
“And what do you think I should have done?” I snapped. “Should I have taken my husband’s way out, letting him find me dead instead of the other way around, burdening him with one more loss just so I wouldn’t have to feel my own grief anymore?”
“You are angry at his selfish actions.”
“What an insightful observation.”
“And how much have you tilted the world toward selfishness?” he asked. “Your children died at the hands of someone who took joy in cruelty. How much cruelty have you seeded in human hearts?” He didn’t even do me the courtesy of looking away as he sent his soft words into my heart like velvet-tipped daggers.
“Stop,” I whispered.
“Which is better?” he asked. “To fight a futile battle, or to fight for the side that took everything you valued from you?”
“Says the one who planned not to do either,” I flung back at him. “You planned to die instead. To run away.”
“Not if there’s hope. Not if you show me light still holds sway in the human heart.”
If he thought there was any light left in my heart, he was wrong. “What do you think you can accomplish here? I made my deal. Even if I wanted to change my mind, I can’t. It’s done.”
He smiled a little at that, like he knew a secret. “The one you made a deal with has many names. One of those is the Great Betrayer. Such a one, as you might imagine, is incapable of keeping his end of a bargain. As such, all agreements made with him are invalid.”
“And I’m sure it would go over well if I told him that,” I said, trying to ignore the small flutter in my heart.
“You would also, of course, be well protected,” the angel assured me. “We do not take our victories for granted.”
“And all I would have to do in exchange,” I said, “is lose everything.”
He shook his head. “You lost everything before you ever made your deal. No, the price is something else. You would need to allow yourself to feel again.” He caught my eyes again, and this time, I saw a challenge in his. “But I already know you pride yourself on the fact that you are not weak.”
; “Weak is one thing,” I said. “Foolish is another. Why should I fight for a side that has no hope?”
“Let me ask you something. What did you feel when you turned to save me? Were you imagining the loss of your promised reward?”
Even though I didn’t want to play this game of his, my mind turned involuntarily back toward that moment. I could barely remember anything of it, to be honest—it was all pure adrenaline. Even so, I knew that sandy beach had been nowhere near my thoughts.
The angel seemed to take my silence as an answer. “Even you are not yet lost to apathy and hard-heartedness. You, who actively fight for the enemy. And that means there is still hope.”
“There’s still hope?” I repeated, dark rage crawling through my veins again. “Would you have told me that after my children died?”
“I would have asked whether you would prefer to see the one responsible burn,” he said, “or to spare another your own pain.”
I didn’t say anything. Neither did he. He just watched me, waiting.
The refusal was on my lips. I had gotten what I had asked for in the bargain, after all. And I had known then what deal I was making. It would hardly be fair for me to go back on it now. And besides that, what did it matter whether I was making things worse, when I had long ago lost all hope that they could be better?
Still, his last question nagged at me. If there was the smallest chance of sparing another my pain… even now…
But there was no chance. His promises were nothing more than fairy tales, or else he—an angel—wouldn’t feel so hopeless himself that he would rather take a dive off a bridge then fight another day.
But he wouldn’t go diving off that bridge if I said yes.
I pictured, again, the moment when I had seen him tip forward over the edge. I still didn’t know why I had run so hard, or yelled so loudly. I didn’t know why I had cared. But what I did know was that even with the knowledge that he had been doing all this to lure me in, I would still do the same thing all over again.
The rage vanished, leaving resignation in its place. Resignation and something else, something I wasn’t willing to examine too closely yet.
“If I do this,” I said, “will you stay away from the bridge?”
He smiled—not the hint of a smile this time, but a real one, full and broad and showing his teeth. “That bridge and all others.” As he spoke, some of the exhaustion seemed to fall away from his face, like he was a snake shedding his skin. When I looked at him, I saw him as he must have been nine hundred years ago, when he still had hope.
I caught a glimmer in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, and felt a answering spark in my own heart. For one tiny instant, I saw a glimpse of a world with more in it than hollow apathy.
The pain rushed in behind it a second later. Because that was the brutal truth: if more was possible, if the world wouldn’t sink slowly into darkness no matter what any of us did, then my children hadn’t needed to die. It hadn’t been inevitable. It wasn’t simply the way the world worked.
I let the pain wash over me. Because the angel was right—I wasn’t weak, and I wasn’t a coward. And I wouldn’t run. Not anymore.
The Coward's Way
I smelled angel on the wind, underneath the reek of greasy chicken and beef. At the front counter of the Burger Barn, my head jerked up from the cash register, with only half of the last customer’s change in hand. But it didn’t matter—the woman had disappeared. Her bag lay abandoned on the counter. Grease from the Chicken-n-Steak Double-Decker Special was already soaking through the thin white paper.
Beyond her, the rest of the line was gone too—the line that had stretched out the door a moment ago. The customers at the tables, also gone. Outside the window, a small herd of people walked mechanically to their cars, compelled by an unknown force.
But I knew what was responsible, even if they didn’t. It stood at the counter in the form of a man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, the only other person still in the Burger Barn. Even the people working back in the kitchen were gone, I was guessing—the constant hum of conversation and crackle of the fryers had both gone abruptly silent.
The man looked ordinary enough. His hair was combed back in an inoffensive style, his button-down shirt tucked into his jeans. Only a second look revealed the parts that were ever-so-slightly wrong. Like the buttons that were on the wrong side of the shirt. Or the lack of belt loops on his jeans. Or the fact that he was wearing two left shoes. And if I had looked up to meet his eyes—which I didn’t need to—I would have seen the pure white of heavenly fire shining there. Unlike me, he hadn’t had millennia to learn how to hide it.
Seconds ticked by on the clock behind me as I stood frozen, trying to decide how to respond. In the end, I plastered my work smile on my face, as if he were an ordinary customer. “Cock-a-doodle-moo!” I greeted him, trying my best to “put some heart into it” like my manager kept insisting I should. “Welcome to the Burger Barn. What can I get for you today?”
“I’ve cleared the building for us. You can dispense with the charade.” The man’s voice—although of course, he wasn’t a man at all—was thin and flat, like he hadn’t bothered learning the intricacies of human intonation.
I kept the plastic smile on my face. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Would you like to place an order? I recommend the Chicken-n-Steak Double-Decker—”
He held up a hand, and my words died in my throat. All that came out was a small croak.
“I have business with you,” he said, before my voice could recover from whatever he had done to it.
I cleared my throat, and cleared it again. The next time I tried to talk, I was relieved to hear actual words come out. “Well, I have business here—the paying kind. So you can either place an order, or move aside for the next customer.” I cast a pointed glance behind him, as if the line still stretched out the door and he were holding it up.
“Enough of your games.” He still didn’t know how to express emotion in his voice, but I could hear his anger just the same. “Stop playing, human, or I’ll strip away that human disguise for you and leave you no choice.”
My smile grew brittle. It would take days to rebuild the disguise, if he followed through on his threat. That many days off work would lose me this job for sure. Not to mention raise all kinds of questions with Danielle. “I guess I can take my break now.”
But I didn’t move. My hands hurt. I looked down, and saw that I was clutching the counter so tightly my fingers had gone white. I forced myself to let go, one finger at a time, and ordered my heavy legs to carry me slowly out from behind the counter.
“And take off that ridiculous hat,” the angel ordered.
I wanted to tell him the hat looked less ridiculous than his attempt at human clothing. But at the memory of his threat, my voice vanished as surely as if he had taken it from me again. I slipped the hat off my head and set it down on the counter. It wasn’t as if I would get in trouble for it, since I was pretty sure I had seen my manager walking out the door with all the rest.
I had already fallen back into the habits of obeying heaven’s orders again.
I slid onto the hard plastic bench of a booth near the far corner. I chose the seat facing out toward the counter, so the angel with his glowing eyes would be facing the wall. Even with no one in the building, my long-honed instincts compelled me to guard my secret.
The angel sat down across from me, folding his body like origami done with an unpracticed hand. He rested his hands on the table—then pulled them back sharply, disgust crossing his too-smooth features. A sheen of grease coated his fingers. The high school kid working this morning must not have wiped down the tables very well. I would have to remember to thank him. Assuming I made it out of this conversation alive.
“What do you want?” I asked, with a bravado I didn’t feel. “Make it quick. If you keep driving people away from this place, at least one of them is going to start wondering what’s up.”
/> “This… establishment… will not be your concern for much longer,” the angel said. “You’re needed back home.”
I started shaking my head as soon as I heard the word home. “It’s not my home anymore.”
The angel’s face darkened. “You’ve forgotten who you are. Wrapped in that human form, reeking of animal flesh.” He wrinkled his nose at the greasy table. “It’s past time for you to cleanse your bones of this false humanity.”
His words sent a flash of very human fear through my manufactured body. He couldn’t make me go home, I reminded myself. Yes, he could burn away the human disguise. If he decided he wasn’t above fighting one of his own, he could wound me so deeply it would take decades to heal. But the one thing he couldn’t do was drag me back to heaven.
“I’ve been gone thousands of years,” I said. “Why suddenly take an interest in me now?”
The angel straightened in his seat as if it were a throne. He lifted his chin as he spoke. “The second war has begun.” His words resonated through the Burger Barn, like he thought he was standing in some grand auditorium, making a speech to an audience of thousands. “You are called. Take up your sword once more, and return home to triumph and glory.”
At the mention of war, the gaudy greens and yellows of the Burger Barn fell away. In its place, I saw the richer and more subtle greens and golds of the fields of heaven. And then I saw those fields as they had been the last time I had seen them. That day, the ground had been red, thick with blood and rot. Black smoke had risen into the sky from half a dozen fires. I smelled that smoke now, and my eyes watered as it burned them. My ears were filled with the screams of the dying, and my arms tingled with the touch of feathers drifting down out of the sky from broken wings.
I blinked away the images, and took a deep breath. Grease had never smelled so good. “I’ll sit this one out, thanks.” My voice was rough. Raw. My attempt at lightness wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all myself.
