Angel Born

by Brian Fuller

  “I think so,” Goliath said, hopping off the table and putting her hands on her hips. While Goliath generally projected a happy, carefree attitude, the stance and look she gave him now were all business. “Here’s the thing, Helo. When I was sixteen years old, I was going outside in a jacket when the weather called for a coat. My Mom told me to wear a coat. That pissed me off. Imagine how angry I was when she forced me—a sixteen year old—to wear a coat. Aclima’s six thousand years old, Helo. Six thousand. She can wear a jacket if she wants. She’s a big girl. Respect that.”

  Apparently Goliath didn’t understand the risk. Helo opened his mouth to say as much when, all at once, light and warmth filled him. It was like the Rapture he experienced every morning but different. His body shook like he was having a seizure, and then a vision exploded into his mind . . .

  “Helo?” Goliath said, tone concerned.

  The light filling him drained away as the vision ended. He was flat on his back on the floor of the plane, still in the conference room, Goliath’s slanted eyes staring down at him. He sat up.

  They had to move.

  “You’re a Visionary!” Goliath exclaimed. “They’re the only ones who shake like that. You’ve been hiding that from the Ash Angels or they would have assigned you to the Occulum.”

  “I am not a Visionary,” Helo said, getting to his feet. “At least I wasn’t until now.”

  Another Bestowal. Already. He could hardly believe it.

  Goliath’s eyes widened. “You mean you’ve received your fourth Bestowal?”

  “Yes.”

  She sat back down on the table. “Incredible! You’ve only got two more to go. You are going to beat me out of here. What was the vision?”

  They had dumped their equipment on the far side of the conference room, and Helo walked around the table and grabbed his body armor. Goliath followed him over, eyes full of wonder.

  “You and I assault a bunch of Dreads in a building in seven minutes.”

  “We don’t land for two hours,” she said.

  “You and I are going to land a lot sooner. Hurry.”

  She retrieved her body armor. “Just you and me?”

  “Yep.”

  That was a lie. Aclima had come with them in the vision. He wouldn’t allow it. “The vision begins with us getting our gear and jumping out of the plane. We hit the ground just before dawn, which heals us.”

  Goliath nodded. “We call that Dawn Diving. Where are the Dreads?”

  “We run about a quarter mile. They’re in a brick building that looks like an abandoned hotel or something. We go in and start shooting up Dreads. The vision stops when the fight begins, so . . .”

  “Visions tend to do that,” she said. “Sounds like fun. Guess this will be your last mission.”

  Helo stopped. Visionaries were so rare and so valuable to the Ash Angel Organization they were hidden and heavily guarded. But he would not spend the rest of his afterlife cooped up in some safe house waiting for visions to come.

  “Look,” he said, “do me a favor and keep this Bestowal between us, at least until we get Cain. Please. I will go back to the Old Masters if I have to, but I am not going to be in a virtual prison the rest of my Ash Angel life—which is looking to be pretty short.”

  Goliath frowned. “I understand, but I could get in serious trouble if I keep this from them. They’re going to want to know why we jumped out of this plane.”

  Helo mulled it over. He had to act, but he didn’t want to drag Goliath into his problems. Then the solution hit him square between the eyes.

  “I’ll say that Dolorem—he’s an Old Master I know—called it in,” he said. “He’s had visions involving me before.”

  “Okay,” she said after bouncing her head back and forth as if the idea were a rubber ball in her head. “Let’s do this . . . whatever it is. Your vision didn’t say why the Dreads were attacking this place?”

  “Nope,” he said, grabbing a shotgun. “I was using slug ammo in the vision.”

  “Yeah,” Goliath said. “Angel Fire ammo is fun, but it does tend to burn buildings down.”

  He loaded up and shoved a few extra rounds into the compartments in his pants.

  Goliath followed suit. “When does the vision start?”

  “As soon as I open the door to the main cabin,” Helo answered, shoving the last shell into his shotgun. He opened the box where the sanctified knife was kept and shoved the glowing weapon into his belt.

  Goliath scrunched her eyebrows. “Was that in the vision?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, that’s not good,” she said, but her eyes had brightened. She gripped her gun. “Probably means a Sheid is involved. You sure it’s just the two of us?”

  He hated lying but nodded. “If it’s a Sheid, then it’s our job. We are Sicarius Nox, after all. Ready?”

  She grabbed the door handle. “I’ll go tell the pilot to get low and slow,” she said. “I’ll let you tell everybody they get to fly without cabin pressure the rest of the way. Shujaa’s going to be mad he missed this.”

  Helo opened the door, finding a flustered Faramir and smug Aclima.

  “You know what, Helo?” Faramir said. “I’ve finally come up with an Ash Angel name for little miss-know-everything over here.”

  “Jeopardy,” Helo said. He’d seen Faramir call her that in the vision and realized he might have given himself away.

  “How did you know?” Faramir asked. Aclima turned toward them, face questioning.

  “Um,” Helo said, scratching his head, “I was thinking . . . earlier . . . that she would be really great on that . . . uh . . . Jeopardy! TV show.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Faramir said. “Wait a minute. Why are you carrying your gear?”

  Goliath pushed her way past. “I’ll let Helo explain. I’ve got to talk to the pilot.”

  Aclima stood up after Goliath went by. “You can explain it while we get ready.”

  “No need,” Helo said. “You two aren’t coming.”

  “Like hell we aren’t,” Aclima said. “We’re a team, remember?”

  Helo put his hands up defensively. “This mission comes from a Visionary. In the vision, only Goliath and I are involved. Sorry.”

  She didn’t flinch, striding down the aisle toward him. “Visions only show what might be. The more help you have, the better.”

  “No, Aclima,” he said. He was not going to let her go down there, especially if a Sheid was involved. “We need to do this like the vision says it unfolds.”

  “Get out of the way,” she said, morphing her hair shorter.

  “No,” he said. “That’s an order.”

  Faramir whistled and shook his head. Aclima stopped dead in her tracks and folded her arms, throwing him a look that would have melted steel. She was not going. He didn’t care how nasty she got. He would not let her get killed or captured and turned back into a Dread.

  “I am going with you,” she said and shoved past him roughly, heading to the room at the back of the plane. He followed, mind fumbling for an argument that would work.

  “In the vision you didn’t come, Aclima. Why can’t you accept that?”

  “I don’t care,” she said, opening the door and heading toward the equipment room, just as she had in the vision, except in the vision he’d helped her gear up.

  With a quick flare of Strength, he snapped the interior doorknob off and closed the door.

  “Helo!” she yelled.

  “Sorry,” Helo yelled back through the door, marching forward. She pounded the door, spouting muffled phrases in a variety of languages in a tone leaving no room for doubt that she had an extensive command of four letter words from across the globe.

  He had just dealt a blow to their budding friendship, but if an angry Aclima was the cost of keeping her safe, so be it.

  Faramir’s jaw was halfway to the floor. “You really are out of your mind,” he said.

  The plane nosed down, engines spooling lower. Outside,
city lights rose steadily toward them.

  “Shut up and buckle in,” Helo said. “We’re going to open the exterior door.”

  “You’re Dawn Diving?” Faramir said.

  “That’s what the vision showed,” Helo said. “And we’re doing what the vision foretold.” He said the last bit extra loud for Aclima’s benefit. He doubted she’d heard it over her assault on the door, which was beginning to buckle.

  Goliath returned from the cockpit. “We’re descending over the outskirts of Denver. We’re almost to ten thousand feet . . . and what is going on? Is Aclima stuck in there?”

  Helo checked his watch. “Twenty seconds until the vision says we jump.”

  Faramir raised his hand.

  “What?” Goliath asked.

  “Well,” Faramir began, “I thought I would let you know that Helo locked Aclima in the room to keep her from going on the mission. I mean, if you’re curious why she’s back there destroying the door.”

  Goliath glowered at Helo. “Really?” she said.

  “She wasn’t in the vision,” Helo restated. He was almost starting to believe it himself. He rechecked his shotgun and moved in front of the door.

  “Still,” Goliath said, “it’s not your call to—”

  “Time to go!” Helo said.

  Just as the vision showed him, he boosted his Strength and kicked out the exterior door with a clang of bent and broken metal. He was immediately sucked out into the predawn chill, the whine of the plane engine fading into the night. He pulled his equipment to his body and kept his limbs in, increasing his speed toward the ground. Under no circumstances did he wish to hit the ground after dawn and be roadkill all day long.

  The wind filled his ears and flapped his clothing, and to the east the pale-blue stain of a new day painted the horizon. The ground rose steadily toward him, the street he would slam into a dark line below.

  “You on comms?” Goliath said.

  “Yes,” Helo said.

  “We’ll talk Aclima later,” Goliath said. “But one thing you need to know about Dawn Diving. Try not to—”

  “—land on your equipment. Let your equipment land on you.” Helo finished for her. “Got it.”

  “Right,” she said. “Faramir. Are you on comms?”

  Silence. The rest of the team’s comm pieces were back with all the equipment and one angry Aclima. They were going into this blind, not knowing where they were or why the Dreads were there. He only knew he was destined to do it. How everything turned out was up to them.

  The ground sprinted at him, and he turned his back to the pavement. The sounds around him gradually changed, the air warming. Three. Two. One.

  Impact.

  He hit flat on his back. There was no holding on to anything. For one instant it felt as if every part of his body had turned to mush. Then nothing. His vision failed. His hearing failed. Even his sensation failed. Dawn Diving was not going to be his favorite way to travel. His consciousness floated in a white void—what Ash Angels called the White Room—unaware of anything, even time, until Rapture came.

  When it did, every care was forgotten in a haze of warmth and peace, a divine washing away of all fear and sadness. His mushy body pulled together again, sight and sound returning. He sat up and cast about for his shotgun, finding it lying in a gutter against the sidewalk, his body armor only a few feet away. As his vision had shown him, the area where he had landed seemed abandoned, an uninspired section of town full of blocky brick apartments rising five stories or more into the air. There were no cars parked on the curb save for a broken-down Chrysler Reliant with flat tires. The car probably hadn’t run in a year.

  He collected his shotgun and turned it over in his hands. Scuffed but still solid. Goliath rounded a corner behind him carrying her equipment in the flickering glow cast by the lone streetlight.

  “My phone ate it when I hit,” she said. “Did yours survive? I want to see where we are.”

  “No time,” Helo said. “By the way, your shotgun doesn’t work.”

  She looked it over. “It did seem a little bent. What am I supposed to use?”

  He grabbed his body armor, and Goliath helped him strap it on. “There will be an Ash Angel in the room where the fight begins. Maybe he can help.”

  “Wonder if it’s an Occulum hidey hole,” she said as Helo returned the favor and fastened the back straps of her body armor.

  “We’re about to find out,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  They took off down the street at a sprint. Their point of entry waited two blocks down and to the left. The hum of passing cars grew louder the farther they went, hinting at a major thoroughfare somewhere nearby. The area would be the perfect place to hide someone. Besides one scrawny cat, they saw no evidence of anything or anyone living in the darkened windows or graffitied alleyways slipping past them as they ran.

  Helo turned left where the vision indicated. A black SUV was parked on a perpendicular street one block away, just the back end visible. His vision had told him there were two more parked in front of it, and he slowed.

  “Black SUVs,” Goliath said with a disparaging tone. “We’ve seen Dreads using those a lot lately. It’s so cliché.”

  “There are three of them, which means we’re outnumbered.”

  Goliath pulled him off to the side and into the recessed entryway of one of the buildings. “Look, if this is an Occulum hideout, our mission is to extract the Visionary and escape, not take down Dreads. No cowboy crusade on this one. Got it?”

  “Understood,” Helo said. “You see that window three stories up?”

  She leaned out and looked down the street. “The only one that’s intact?”

  “Yes,” Helo confirmed. “That’s our entry point. I go first. We’ll Strength jump and land in a bedroom. Then you have to use your aura to reassure the Ash Angel who’s there that we’re on the same team. Then I start shooting.”

  In the vision Aclima had gone into the bottom floor by herself. That alone scared him.

  Goliath nodded. “Well, like my mom used to say, ‘The longer you wait, the more scared you’ll get.’ I’ll follow your—”

  Scuffling nearby brought Goliath up short. Helo used hand signals to indicate he would look—Goliath’s aura would give them away in a heartbeat. He stuck his head out for a quick look and pulled it back as fast as he could.

  “What was it?” Goliath said.

  He leaned in close to her ear. “A Possessed female. Armed. Coming this way.”

  “Was she in your vision?” she whispered.

  “No,” he said. “No she wasn’t.”

  Chapter 10

  Holes

  Helo would never forget the first time he saw a Possessed outside a nightclub. Of all the creatures of the dark, these people-hijackers set his skin to crawling the most. The Possessed young woman who approached their hiding place looked like the poster child for a meth public-service announcement: stringy hair, emaciated body, sunken eyes, and a face marred by sores and scars.

  Add to this a spectral ghost clinging to her body—its head merged with hers, its ghostly hand thrust inside her chest to grasp her heart—and the woman was a walking nightmare. The evil spirit’s black eyes with glowing red points—unholy eyes that could torch—obscured hers in sunken sockets. Her bony hand clutched a pistol, and despite her unhealthy demeanor, there was strength in her stride.

  “I have the Exorcise Bestowal,” Goliath whispered.

  Helo knew it was a rare gift and had never seen it used. “How long does it take?”

  “Depends on the evil spirit,” Goliath answered. “I’ll use Speed to take her down. That gun goes off and we lose our tactical advantage.”

  Ash Angel rules said they couldn’t kill the Possessed, which made dealing with them difficult. Even so much as injuring them was frowned upon, though not absolutely forbidden when the need arose.

  Helo nodded and shrunk back into the entryway, letting Goliath take the forward position. She crouched and quietl
y set her useless shotgun down as the cautious footsteps of the Possessed came closer. As soon as the woman stepped into view, Goliath sprang, her body a blur. The Possessed barely had time to turn her head before Goliath’s fist came down on her jaw, knocking her unconscious. The eyes of the evil spirit still stared through the eyelids, and Goliath flipped the woman over before it could torch. The ghostly, translucent body squirmed but couldn’t escape the prison it had chosen.

  Helo ran out and grabbed the woman’s legs, Goliath taking her arms, and they lugged her over to the entryway facedown.

  “I need a solid object of some sort for the exorcism,” Goliath said. “Something that doesn’t deform easily. A rock will do.”

  Helo knew little about exorcism other than it involved trapping the evil spirit inside an object so it couldn’t return to the spirit world or another victim.

  “Will a bullet do?”

  “Good enough,” Goliath answered.

  Helo dug one from a pocket on the front of his pants. As he handed it over, the sound of breaking wood echoed in the street. He leaned around the wall to get a look at the building and saw red auras and flashlight beams flashing past the windows on the bottom floor. They were going room to room searching for something or someone.

  “We’re late,” Helo said, readying his gun. He had to get in there. But Goliath had closed her eyes, one hand on the head of the fallen woman and one clutching the slug. Virtus from Goliath pulsed into the Possessed, the evil spirit squirming. Goliath gritted her teeth and whispered, “Tell me your name” over and over.

  “Kish,” a masculine voice said, even though the word issued from the young woman’s throat.

  Goliath’s face relaxed. “Why are you here, Kish?”

  The woman thrashed, and Goliath repeated the question.

  “We are here to capture a woman,” Kish finally said in a scathing tone.

  “Who?” Goliath pressed.