I, Angel

by JC Andrijeski

  He gazed down, looking over the tall white letters. They looked strangely crooked and narrow from directly overhead.

  His eyes followed the contoured hills, pausing on a cluster of trees maybe a hundred yards down from the letters.

  Then he saw it. He saw what something or someone brought him here to see.

  He saw light.

  Not sunlight. Not even artificial, man-made light.

  The light he saw lived beneath the earth. It came closer to the lightning-like charges that came off Dags himself, that blue-green glow that came off his chest and arms and hands, and yes, his wings when they sprouted from his shoulders, whenever he wasn’t actively holding it back. Dags had no idea what that light was, what it meant, how he generated it.

  The light under the earth wasn’t blue-green.

  It was a deep, dark, blood red.

  It pulsed, like someone had cut an artery inside the Earth.

  It didn’t feel right. Just looking at it made Dags feel sick. Something about it felt rotten, corrupted. Black threads ran through the red, bubbling up from below the crust, exuding a thick, oily, black and dark-gray cloud from where it began.

  The red light wasn’t like lava.

  It wasn’t really like blood.

  The black tar wasn’t like smoke, either. It was clumped, stringy, like stretched out dead tendons in a corpse; it floated and slid through the sky as if looking for something to stick to, something to wrap itself around.

  The longer Dags looked at it, the more his stomach hurt.

  It wasn’t a hole in the Earth itself.

  It was more like a boil on the Earth’s skin, a pus-filled sore that was oozing out things the Earth didn’t want inside it. Whatever those things were, they were winding themselves into the atmosphere of upper Earth, sliding along the ground.

  Dags wanted to know more.

  What the hell was it? Was it always here?

  In a weird way, it might actually explain some things about Hollywood.

  He looked around at the blue sky, the relatively clean, non-rotten air above the rolling hills of Griffith Park. He looked for his grandfather, for anyone who might answer him.

  What do I do with this? he sent into the silence. How do I stop it?

  No one answered.

  Dags continued to listen, some part of his mind straining to hear, looking for any help at all. He would have taken anything⏤any crumb, any clue, any riddle, any sign as to what he should do next, how he might stop this thing, whatever it was.

  He heard nothing.

  He got nothing.

  Dags opened his eyes.

  He found himself facing those same Hollywood Hills.

  He sat there, cross-legged, right under the unlit sign for the Roosevelt Hotel. His eyes focused over the edge of the roof, past Hollywood Boulevard, ending on the white Hollywood sign on the side of the mountain, visible below a deep blue, cloudless sky.

  Jason Tig had been going up there, the last day before he blew up his old life.

  He’d told Stan Forester he was meeting someone.

  Whatever his real reasons for going, it was starting to look like everything started there, with that strange, bleeding and rotting hole in the side of the mountain. Had someone lured him up there? Had Tig gotten some of that crap on him? Is that how that super-demon, or whatever it was, managed to possess him?

  And why had that thing abandoned him? Dags had never known a demon to willingly give up a body once he possessed it.

  He’d completely forgotten he wasn’t alone on the roof.

  “Did you learn anything?” Phoenix said.

  He turned his head, watching her re-settle in the sun lounger, her long, brown legs crossed as she took a sip of wine. She watched him over a pair of sunglasses, her green eyes holding that sharper intensity as she studied his face.

  “You did learn something. What is it?”

  “I don’t know if it counts as ‘something,’” Dags muttered, stiffly climbing to his feet.

  Pacing on the roof in front of her sun-lounger, he described what he’d seen.

  Saying all of it out loud, under the early afternoon Los Angeles sun, the information sounded even thinner to him. And yet, something about explaining it to her caused him to see things he’d missed.

  “There was some kind of structure there,” he said, frowning as he thought. “Directly over the hole… or light… or whatever it was.”

  “What kind of structure?”

  “I don’t know.” Still thinking, he was about to ask her for her phone, then remembered they’d left them downstairs, their batteries out on the coffee table. “Is there a business center downstairs? Something with a computer I could use?”

  She waved him off, her lips pinched.

  “Don’t bother.”

  Picking up the receiver of a phone he hadn’t noticed, a neon pink antique that looked like something out of a fifties movie, she put it to her ear, dialing “0” with the rotary dial.

  “Hi… yes. In the Gable-Lombard Suite.” She paused, listening to someone on the other end. “Yes, thank you. I wondered if you could bring up a tablet? My friend and I could use a computer and left ours at home…” Trailing off, she listened again, then put her hand over the receiver, meeting Dags’ gaze. “Would you rather have a laptop?”

  His mouth pinched slightly, but he shrugged.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  She took her hand off the receiver. “Either is fine. No. Brand doesn’t matter.”

  There was another short pause.

  “Thank you. Lunch would be lovely. Whatever the chef has on special would be fine…” A slighter pause. “No. Just two. Ms. Jackson is asleep. Oh, and could you bring it up to the roof? Please don’t knock or ring the bell. As I said, Ms. Jackson is asleep. Yes. Thank you. Oh,” she said then, smiling a little and giving Dags a darting look. “And a cappuccino. Make that two actually. Nice big, strong ones. Thanks.”

  She hung up, exhaling in a sigh.

  “They’re bringing it all up here,” she explained, unnecessarily.

  He nodded.

  Glancing around at the view of Hollywood from the roof, he rested his hands on his hips, fighting again to think, wondering what he should do now, and whether he could risk leaving the two women alone here, when it was obvious every employee at the hotel knew they were up here. He’d provided protection to clients before, for various reasons over the years, but he’d never had to factor in the fame element to this degree before.

  Two movie stars, both possibly being targeted by demons.

  “I might need to go up there,” he told her, still thinking.

  “We can’t leave Asia alone,” Phoenix said, frowning. “Can we wait until she wakes up?”

  Dags hesitated, then nodded.

  He didn’t bother to tell her he fully intended on leaving her behind, too. There’s no way in hell, no pun intended, he was letting her anywhere near what he’d seen in his vision of the Hollywood Hills. These demons were far too interested in her already.

  Also, just the logistics of it was a nightmare.

  I mean, sure, just bring two, super-famous movie stars along with him on a demon hunt, not to mention illegally trespassing on restricted land while he looked for a possible hell portal⏤a hell portal that could be guarded by literally anything.

  “Am I allowed to go swimming after we eat?” Phoenix asked, breaking into his thoughts.

  Dags looked at her.

  His eyes slid up her figure without him willing it, following the lines of her bare brown legs up to where they ended at her black shorts. He’d barely noticed her change of clothes until now. She must have thought to bring some with her in her backpack.

  “Not alone,” he said after that pause.

  “What about Asia?” Phoenix said, frowning.

  Dags thought about that.

  “Do you think they’d have baby monitors?” he said. “The front desk? It’s not a perfect solution, but if we get two sets, I could p
ut one by the door and another in her room⏤”

  Phoenix was already smiling.

  “Asia’s going to looove that.”

  She grinned wider at him, leaning over to pick up the plastic pink phone receiver a second time. Dialing zero on the rotary, she glanced up, adding more seriously,

  “It’s a good idea. I’ll tell the front desk to keep an eye on surveillance up here, too. Give them some story about Asia having trouble with a stalker. When we go downstairs we can tell them to give no one access to the room except you or me while we’re gone.”

  Dags nodded, feeling his shoulders relax.

  “Okay,” he said. “Then you can swim.”

  “We can swim,” she countered.

  Dags was about to argue, when someone picked up on the other end of the phone. Phoenix averted her gaze, sliding back into her smooth, more melodious movie-star voice as she spoke to the person on the other end of the line.

  That time, Dags noticed the difference.

  For the first time, it also occurred to him to wonder what that difference meant.

  Chapter 25

  The Pool

  “I think I need to find a way to close that portal,” Dags said, thinking aloud as he treaded in clear blue water. “That’s the only way I can make sense of that vision. Somehow, that thing got opened. Something came out of it, and I have to find a way to kill it. Or maybe throw it back in. Then close it… the door, I mean…”

  He trailed, realizing he had no idea how to do any of those things.

  He also realized he hadn’t actually seen any of that in his “vision,” which was pretty vague and unhelpful, as far as supernatural visions went.

  Phoenix laughed, splashing him.

  “Turn it off for a little while, Angel-guy,” she advised. “The pool is for us. This is supposed to reset us a little. Clear our heads. So we can come back to all the murder and mayhem and demons with some perspective.”

  Dags frowned, glancing around them.

  They had the pool to themselves.

  That could be because it was three o’clock on a weekday. Or, it could be because someone cleared it out so Phoenix X could swim without being bothered by regular hotel guests or press.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to know which it was.

  “You’re still thinking,” she said, giving him a mock frown. “You’ve got that super-serious, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here look again. Is it really that impossible for you? To just hang out? To just, you know, relax… and not be actively trying to solve murders or kill demons or whatever?”

  Dags exhaled.

  He tried to let go at least some of his tension, but didn’t really succeed. “Do you think Steve McQueen is all right? I didn’t take him for a very long walk.”

  “Do you want me to call the concierge? Have someone go up there to get him? They’ll walk him for us, if you want.”

  Dags frowned, glancing at the baby monitor and surveillance video they’d set up to play through one of the three tablets the concierge brought up to the roof earlier. Dags could see views of the penthouse suite’s front door, its living room, and both bedrooms. In the smaller of the two rooms, Asia was crashed out asleep on the king-sized bed.

  Curled up against her side was the husky-shepherd mix.

  His blue eyes were closed as he pressed himself into the curve of Asia’s body.

  They both looked dead asleep, and completely relaxed.

  They both looked like they felt safe.

  “No,” he said, exhaling. “No. I think they’re okay. Probably best not to scare the hell out of Asia by having some stranger drag my dog away.”

  Phoenix grunted humorously.

  When he looked back at her, she flashed him a smile before pulling down and arranging the goggles over her eyes, and diving under the water. Using a modified version of breast stroke, she glided towards the deep end. He watched her a few seconds more, then, realizing what he was doing, he tried to relax, or at least pretend he was relaxing.

  Going back and forth between swimming after her and getting out of the pool altogether, in the end he did neither, flipping onto his back and letting his arms splay out.

  Floating in the blue water, he gazed up at the sky.

  He didn’t spend a lot of time in swimming pools.

  When Dags got a craving for water, he generally went to the ocean.

  He was still staring up, when he realized he felt eyes on him.

  Flipping back to his feet, he jerked himself upright, looking around.

  There were eyes on them.

  People now stood on the deck surrounding the pool.

  A lot of people.

  Weirder, Dags hadn’t heard them.

  He hadn’t felt any inkling that anyone was approaching, or seen the shadows they cast under the sun. He turned around in a circle, staring at them were they stood, their auras flickering around them where they hovered right at the water’s edge.

  They didn’t have shadows. He hadn’t seen the movement because their bodies didn’t really block the sun. For the same reason, the ones on the west side of the pool were a lot harder to see.

  He was still staring around, when he heard a splash on the other side of the pool, maybe ten yards from where he stood, with water up to his chest.

  “Phoenix?” he called out, not taking his eyes off the people. “Come here.”

  There was a silence.

  Then he heard a ripple of water from the same direction of the splash, and realized she was probably doing as he’d asked.

  A few seconds later, there was another ripple and splash, and this time he felt it as much as heard it, as she swam right up to him.

  “What is it?” she said, gasping a little as she smoothed back her wet hair.

  He never took his eyes off the people around the pool.

  He’d noticed by then that their clothes were strange.

  Some wore clothing that looked only a few years old. Others wore clothes that belonged in the seventies, the eighties, even a few that belonged to the forties and fifties. He stared around at the hats worn by men, the old-style bikinis worn by the women, the bouffant hairdos and greased back pompadours, the thick sideburns and bellbottoms and wide ties.

  “Do you see them?” he said finally, still absorbing faces.

  “What?” Alarm reached Phoenix’s voice. “See who?”

  “Them,” Dags said, nodding towards the people who lined the rim of the pool. “You can’t see any of them? Really?”

  There was a silence.

  Then her voice lowered to a whisper.

  “Dags, you’re scaring me,” she said, gripping his arm.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just… you really don’t see them?” His eyes continued to dart from face to face, drinking in their features, trying to understand the blank yet somehow interested looks on their faces. They were looking at him and Phoenix expectantly, like they were waiting for them to do something.

  Phoenix slid closer to him, gripping his arm tighter.

  “What do you see?” she whispered.

  “People,” he said simply. He focused on the outlines of their auras, the way they glowed, the lack of shadows. “Maybe not people,” he amended. “Maybe it’s more like an echo of people. Like their auras. Like what I see on people normally… but without the people part. Does that make sense?”

  “No,” she said, her fingers tightening on his skin. “What are they doing?”

  “They’re just standing there,” he said. “Looking at us.”

  Scanning faces again, Dags frowned.

  He wasn’t sure if he should tell Phoenix he recognized some of them.

  He may not be up on current pop culture, or the latest movie stars or gossip, but Dags had seen movies before. In fact, in absolute numbers, he’d seen a lot of movies. Most of them were relatively old movies… which in Hollywood generally meant older than six months, but in Dags’ case meant more like older than twenty or thirty years.

  He recognized
some of the faces from those.

  Some had been the Phoenix X’s of their days.

  “What?” she said, obviously watching his face. “What is it?”

  Hesitating a breath, Dags gave in, motioning towards the line of ghostly people.

  “Some are old movie stars,” he admitted. “Dead old movie stars,” he added. “I have no idea what they want.”

  “Are they looking at both of us?” Phoenix said. “Or just you?”

  Dags frowned.

  It hadn’t occurred to him to notice.

  “Both of us,” he said, still frowning. “Mostly me. Probably because I can see them.”

  Her fingers tightened even more.

  He could practically hear her heart beating in her chest.

  “You’re freaking me out, Dags,” she said.

  “Sorry.” He continued looking around at them, his muscles tense. They didn’t seem to be doing anything threatening, though.

  “What do you want?” he said, speaking aloud. “Why are you here?”

  “Dags!” Phoenix whispered, alarmed. “Don’t encourage them!”

  He had a perverse desire to laugh. Phoenix slid further behind him, gripping his back, more or less hiding in his shadow.

  Dags didn’t tell her they were surrounded on all sides.

  He relaxed his hold on the Change part of himself, feeling an instant flush of blue-green current shoot through his limbs. He pulled some of it down to his fingertips, and from his chest up into his throat, and, more to the point, into his voice.

  “Answer me,” he commanded.

  There was a silence where his words only hung in the air, vibrating.

  Then one of the forms, one of those Dags recognized from all those movies he’d seen, stepped forward. Wearing an old-fashioned suit, looking more like he had at his prime than he had in his last movies before he died, he stared down at Dags, his piercing eyes shockingly familiar, even if they weren’t aimed at a camera this time.

  You need to close it, the movie star said.

  It was the exact same voice Dags remembered from all those films.