A Terrible Fall of Angels

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Kate, come to the door.”

  “Don’t you fucking move, bitch!” Mark’s demon voice again.

  The power flowing from Gimble’s hand to me pulsed. I felt it flow into my hands where they touched the door and I prayed again, silent this time, but I knew that God could hear me, and the angelic being using Gimble as its doorway would hear it, too.

  St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.

  “Ask for your own safety, too, Havoc.” This was Gimble’s voice, his frown jarring in that freckled face of his.

  I added out loud, “Keep me safe as I save this woman. Help me defeat my enemies and those that harm the innocent.”

  Gimble smiled at me stupidly happy, and for just a second I saw stars in his eyes. “Tell her she will be safe, and it will be so.” And that wasn’t his voice again. It reminded me of the demon and Mark Cookson, but I kept that from the front of my thoughts and the angelic energy didn’t remark on it, so I could still hide my thoughts even now. I guess I hadn’t lost all my skills, even the ones that I wasn’t supposed to learn.

  “Kate, come to the door so I can see where you are.”

  “Don’t you move!” the demon roared.

  I heard her whimper.

  “You cannot touch her,” I said.

  The roar sounded again, and then it was Mark’s voice. “What’s happening? Why can’t we touch her?”

  “We’re outgunned.” The demon’s voice was disgusted.

  “You’re a demon! Do something!”

  “Kate, come where I can see you.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going to open the door.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  You said the door was stuck,” she said.

  “We have . . . we can open it now, but I have to see where you are so the door doesn’t . . . so opening it doesn’t accidentally hurt you.” I shut out the image that went with that warning. I shoved it back down into the dark hole of my soul, where all the sins and horrors I’d experienced stayed.

  I heard movement and the demon’s two voices started arguing. The younger one wanted to grab her, fuck her, or kill her at least, and the older one, the real demon, was trying to explain that the girl was off-limits in this moment.

  Kate appeared at the door, one arm trying to cover as much of her body as she could; her other arm was held awkwardly at her side, not moving much with the dislocated shoulder. The demon had ripped the hospital gown off her. I hoped that was the worst he’d done, but one problem at a time. Save the life first, save the rest later.

  “Step that way, stay along that wall,” I said, motioning with my head, because my hands were on the door. I felt that pulse of power as Gimble laid his other hand on me, so that a hand sat on both of my shoulders and suddenly I felt them—wings. Wings so tall and huge that they went through the ceiling and through the floor, spread out around my human body like I was a child trying to wear my father’s clothes. They rose up white and shining, edged with silver and shot through with gold, so beautiful. If they’d been a physical weight it would have dragged me over like a turtle stuck on its back, pinned to the earth by the weight of the glory at my back. Tears started down my face as I put my hands against the door and pushed. I knew the door would move for me, I knew it would open, because for this moment I had been granted the strength of the angel whose wings rose like a halo around me. Nothing so fragile as a door could stand against me. And just like I had at sixteen, I pushed too hard.

  The door cracked, splintering, over half of it spinning into the room. If Kate had still been on the bed or just behind the door, she’d have been in its path and she would have died. I shoved the memory of another moment like this down, back into the hole inside me where all the sins lived. I could not let them weaken me now. A sinner forgiven by God cannot be anything but strong. The wings at my back flared, flexing as if we would fly with them, and I reached my hand out to Kate. Her hand wrapped around mine and I pulled her out of the room with Gimble at my back as if he held the angel wings in place like a costume that wasn’t fastened down yet.

  Kate threw her undamaged arm around me, but there wasn’t time. The demon rushed the splintered doorway. I pushed Kate into the hallway behind us. I felt the thrill of power as she stumbled through the wings. She reached up as if she felt something and then I planted my foot and braced for impact. The demon filled my physical vision, but the inside of my head was full of shining light laced with gold and silver finer than any that would ever hold a ring. My fear was gone, washed away by the light.

  “I command you to leave this body in the name of God and all the angels.” I said it confident that the words with the power at my back would stop the demon.

  The demon hesitated and then it laughed, staring down at its taloned hands as if surprised they were still there. “Too late, angel boy, this body’s mine.” The talons slashed at me again, going for my throat, and only the quickness of angels let me block his arm with mine and block his other arm as it came for my heart.

  “Havoc, get down!” Charleston yelled from behind me.

  I dropped to my knees, trying to roll away, but the wings were in the way, and Gimble was there. “Down!” Charleston shouted again.

  I got to my feet, trying to fill the space of the wings at my back, and pictured them folding around Gimble and me like shields of light that nothing could pierce as I held the smaller man against me, as if I expected the wings to launch us skyward and I was afraid I’d drop him.

  The shotgun blast sounded like a small bomb in the hallway, or maybe it was just that close to us. I kept all my concentration on the wing shield around us. I didn’t dare use my physical eyes to look at anything. My world had to be the shining wings around us and that phantom sensation of being tall enough to fit the giant arch of them.

  The shotgun barked again, and then there was a heavy silence like what happens after explosions and gunfire when your ears stop ringing and you can hear something besides the blood roaring in your ears, except my ears weren’t ringing. I could hear perfectly, in fact I could hear better than my human hearing, as if the touch of angel wings had given me more than strength and speed and safety. It wasn’t the first time or the hundredth that I’d borrowed the senses of the angelic. I shoved the thought that went with that into the hole in my soul. Eventually I’d fill it up and it would either save me or destroy me forever, but not today.

  Charleston said, “Havoc, Gimble, are you in there?”

  A man’s voice that I wasn’t sure of said, “They’re right there, Lieutenant.”

  “They disappeared.” And I thought that was the female guard.

  It was Bridges who said, “Havoc, stop playing with the light-up feathers and tell us you’re in there.”

  “We’re here. Safe,” I said, but my voice sounded uncertain enough that even I didn’t believe me.

  Gimble pushed against me. “Havoc, what the hell, man? I love you, but not that way.”

  Unlike the flame angel, the wings didn’t just vanish when he cursed, they opened as I opened my arms as if I really could control them with my human body.

  Gimble stumbled away from me, staring down at the hospital gown and everyone in the hallway. “How did I get here?”

  Charleston came up to him with a huge 20-gauge shotgun in his hands. The gun looked exactly right in his hands. He patted the gun like it was a pet and said, “Hoodoo powder and get-the-fuck-away-from-us juice.”

  “You made that last ingredient up,” Lila said, scowling at him.

  He just grinned at her.

  “Did you kill it?” Kate’s voice made me look at her. Nurse Prescott was there with a blanket thrown over Kate. I really did owe her good liquor or something.

  “You can’t kill a demon, or
at least not with anything mortal,” Charleston said.

  “What the hell is going on?” Gimble demanded.

  Bridges said, “Look at Havoc with something besides your eyeballs, Gimble.” She pointed at me.

  He turned and looked at me. He frowned and it was his frown again. A tightness I didn’t know I’d been holding released in my gut, and with the relief the wings began to fade like morning dew as the sun rises, drying the grass and turning the dewdrops to tiny prisms of light and color.

  “Rainbow wings, cool,” Gimble said, grinning at me. He reached a hand out toward the wings as they faded. Bridges slapped his hand as if he were five and reaching for a cookie before it was cool enough to eat.

  “Angel shit is what got you in the hospital, Gimble,” she said, voice heavy with disdain.

  “Last thing I remember is the crime scene in the off-campus apartment.” He frowned, but then looked at the fading rainbow of the wings and smiled. It was a shadow of that beatific one he’d had before. He started to reach out toward them again, but a glance at Bridges and he didn’t finish the movement. “Will someone explain what’s happening to me? Please?” I think the please was aimed at Bridges. She was one of the few women I’d seen be immune to his boyish charm.

  The wings vanished to physical sight, but I could still feel them like a heavy curve of feathers as I turned to see half our unit in the hospital hallway. “Which one of you could see Gimble and me standing here?” I asked. Anyone who could see through angel magic had been holding out on us.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I started to question Sato, the officer that had seen through the angel wings, but Nurse Prescott came up to me, and after everything she’d done today, I raised a hand and said, “Excuse me for a moment,” and turned to her.

  “Hello, Nurse Prescott,” I said, smiling.

  She smiled back. “Hello, Detective Havelock, though after the day we’ve had I think we could use first names.”

  “I’m Havoc,” I said.

  A look of pure cynicism filled her eyes. I realized that her eyes were green, or gray-green. It was an unusual color, but there hadn’t been time to notice until now. “Did your parents dislike you, Havoc Havelock?”

  I had to smile. “Havoc is what most people call me, but no, it’s a nickname.”

  “So, are you going to share your actual first name or is it even worse than Havoc Havelock?” She looked at me very directly, smile lines curled upward around her eyes and mouth, which let me know she was older than she looked. She was in shape for ten years older than me; if she was older than that I needed to ask what her exercise routine was, because she looked slim and fit.

  “Zaniel, my first name is Zaniel.”

  “I’ve never heard the name before, but it’s lovely, a lot lovelier than mine. I’m Hazel. I’ve always hated the name. Zaniel would have sounded much better in elementary school, though I guess for a boy it might have been a little too pretty a name.”

  I didn’t try to explain that I hadn’t been born Zaniel. “I think Hazel might have been worse for a boy.”

  She laughed and agreed with me. I was beginning to see where the smile lines came from, and realized she had almost no frown lines, as if she didn’t do it often enough for it to leave a mark. I liked that thought a lot.

  She let the shared moment of laughter fade, and then said, “Kate wants to see you.”

  “Is she okay?”

  Prescott made a face I couldn’t interpret; I just didn’t know her that well, it wasn’t a happy face. “We’re trying to get her to agree to a rape kit, or at least an exam.”

  “He didn’t . . .” I started to say.

  “Not full on, but the doctor wants to make sure that one of those claws didn’t do more damage than we can see without an exam.”

  Something must have shown on my face, because she gripped my arm and said, “You did everything you could to save her, Zaniel, everything.”

  “Not enough.”

  She frowned at me and got that look that my great-aunt Matilda used to get. The one just before she gave me a talking-to, which made me put Prescott toward the older side of near fifty, just from attitude.

  “We won today, Zaniel; don’t steal the victory from yourself. There are too many days in our line of work that are losses; you’ve got to treasure the wins, or you’ll burn out and you won’t still be saving lives when you’re my age.”

  “I honestly don’t know how old you are, but if that comment puts you over what I’d guessed, then tell me your secret to staying young, because I’m going to need it.”

  She laughed outright then, and it was such a good laugh that it gave me a moment of regret that she was twenty years older than me. “That’s the nicest thing a man has said to me in a long time.”

  “Let me apologize for the rest of my sex, then, because they’re idiots.” I realized I was flirting, which was weird since I usually had trouble doing it, or at least Reggie told me I was bad at it.

  “I have a son about your age,” she said, giving me that cynical look again.

  “I honestly wouldn’t have guessed that.” I meant it.

  She raised an eyebrow at me, as if she didn’t believe me. I gave her the Boy Scout salute. She rolled her eyes. “Well, if anything will remind me that you’re too young for me, that did it. I was troop mom one year.”

  “You brought up your son first, mine’s three.”

  “Congratulations, that’s a great age.”

  I nodded. “It is.” And then I heard Kate’s voice cutting through all the other noise. She wasn’t screaming, but she wasn’t happy either. I knew her voice that well already; not a good sign. What the Heaven was wrong with me, flirting with the nurse and already attuned to Kate’s voice? It was like I was looking for it. I wasn’t. Reggie and I were in couples therapy, though we’d gotten to the point of divorce papers just needing a signature before we decided to try counseling for our son’s sake. I’d lived alone so long that she felt like an ex, almost as much as my first wife. We’d been stuck in limbo for over six months. I missed having a woman in my life who didn’t make me feel sick to my stomach to be with her. No one does disdain like a beautiful woman, and Reggie was still that. It just wasn’t enough to make up for the pain and loneliness anymore. She’d even said I could date while we were separated, but she was throwing every past relationship up in my face; I wasn’t going to give her more ammunition, so I was celibate for the first time since I was fifteen. It was like suffocating surrounded by air that I wasn’t allowed to breathe.

  “What do you want me to tell Kate?” I asked, all laughter and happiness gone from my face, my voice; even my shoulders slumped like something was pushing down on me. It made me straighten up, pull my shoulders back, and I could hear Sergeant Macintosh, my drill, barking, “Don’t slump, Havoc, we can see how fucking tall you are, own every damn inch of yourself because it won’t help you survive what we’re about to do to you, but at least you’ll look like a soldier, you’ll just never be one.” Macintosh had talked like that and worse to all the newbies; it was nothing personal, just his job. His training had kept me alive more than once. I wondered if I’d ever stop hearing him barking in my head. How old did you have to be to stop hearing your drill sergeant in your head?

  “Just hold her hand and tell her she’s safe, but be careful, Detective, she sees you as her white knight, and she’s traumatized enough to want you to take the job up permanently.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” I said.

  “Just sharing hard-won wisdom. I met my first husband when he was a patient in the ER. I saved his life, too.”

  “How’d that turn out, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I got my son out of it, but eventually you get tired of saving people off the job when it’s your job-job.”

  “Kate seemed brave and capable,” I said.

  She gave me that cynical look again, her eyes almost perfectly green now as if the gray had gotten swallowed up. “Maybe she is, but
unless you want a damsel in distress on your arm, I’d tone down any white-knight urges you’re feeling right now.”

  I frowned at her, fought to stop, and then sighed heavily. “I’ll do my best.”

  She scowled at my stomach. “You’re hurt.”

  I looked down to see the blood that was finally starting to flow through my shirt. “The angel magic kept it from bleeding,” I said, as if everyone knew that.

  “Men,” she said, rolling her eyes. She grabbed my arm, and it was all nurse or Great-Aunt Matilda, no flirting involved. “Let’s get you patched up before you go see your damsel.”

  Charleston called, “Havoc, I need your opinion in here.”

  I actually turned toward the broken doorway, but Prescott yelled, “Your detective needs a doctor before he does any more detecting, just like you have to have a doctor look at you before you leave the hospital.”

  Charleston stuck his head back out. “I told you I’m fine.”

  “You were unconscious for nearly twenty minutes, so you don’t get to leave without a doctor checking you over, or you signing a waiver releasing the hospital of responsibility when you lose consciousness driving home and kill yourself.”

  “I thought nurses were supposed to be comforting,” I said.

  She gave me that been-there-done-it-all look again. “I keep you alive and help you heal; I leave comfort to the new nurses who haven’t lost their youthful optimism.”

  Lila Bridges snorted from the doorway beside Charleston. “Did you ever have youthful optimism? Because I sure as hell didn’t.”

  Hazel smiled and shook her head. “Come on, white knight, I need to stop the bleeding long enough for you to reassure your damsel so we can treat her.”

  “Come back as soon as you can, Havoc,” Charleston said.

  “Roger that, Lieutenant.”

  “We can’t find Mark Cookson’s body.”

  That made me turn back toward him. “The demon should have abandoned the body and left him to die.”