Watcher

by Andrew Weis

  “Let’s see it,” Coz said.

  I smiled. I loved having the advantage. Applying it against a thug like Coz inspired me.

  “I don’t have it with me, but I know where I last saw it.”

  “Where?” Ellis said, as he took a sudden, intense interest.

  “My car.”

  “The GTO?” Coz asked.

  “No, my freaking golf cart,” I snapped. “Yeah, the GTO.”

  Ellis stepped toward me. The heat of his hatred for me radiated from him like a boiler about to explode. Fearing I overplayed my hand, I took a cautious step back.

  “If you miraculously get your promotion, Jessa, you’ll see how the Powers will feed you all kinds of promises for advancement only to promise you more. Then you’ll understand why I feel what I feel,” Ellis said.

  “What did they promise you?” I asked.

  Ellis grew furious. In a flash, he lunged at me and clutched my throat.

  “I want that note, Jessa. Now! Coz, let the boy go,” Ellis said.

  Coz looked at me, then shoved Daniel away.

  With a quick upward swat, I broke Ellis’s grip and shoved him away. My vision turned blue, then I materialized a dagger. I tackled Coz, and we rolled along on the dock area.

  Coz kicked me off him. After I got to my feet, we squared up.

  “You always was smart, Jessa. Once I get the note, I’ll put you down permanent,” Coz said.

  “Yeah, right. Like I’m going to let you do that. You’re such an idiot, Coz.”

  Coz attacked me with a barrage of elaborate martial arts kicks and punches. I never knew he was that fluid with his fighting abilities. One of his punches connected and knocked me flat. I knew nothing about demons nor their tactics so I had to rely on my own angelic experiences. The wings on my back glowed, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose as stiff as needles.

  Coz materialized a red glowing dagger as he stepped toward me. In an instant, he struck my head with a lightning fast roundhouse kick. I tumbled off the dock between the truck and the concrete dividing wall.

  Coz pounced onto me. I grabbed his leg and swung him against the truck several times before I flung him back onto the dock. He spun to his feet and fanned out his wings.

  “For a watcher, you’re strong. How can you throw me like that? Ellis, you said she was weak,” Coz asked.

  Ellis tilted his head and squinted as he looked at me.

  “Finish her, Coz,” Ellis said. “Do it now.”

  “We all make our deals, Coz,” I said. “You made a bad one.”

  “Holy mother,” Reggie said.

  “Damn straight. We better evac,” Nero said. He and Nemo picked up Tyrone.

  I noticed movement in the dock master’s booth, then the big brass alarm bells rattled.

  “Get out of here!” I shouted. I watched Coz as he shot through the ceiling and like a cat on a mouse, I chased him.

  Chapter 35

  DESPITE MOVING AROUND in the dark of night, my blue vision made everything appear as though it were daylight. I spotted Coz flying away from Downtown and caught up to him with little difficulty. I swung my arms around his wings like a bear trap. His head snapped back in vain attempting to head butt me while his legs kicked in all directions.

  I flapped my wings for all I was worth to stay in the sky, but gravity won out, and we tumbled toward the ground. I knew I couldn’t survive a hard landing, so at the last moment, I let him go and saved myself.

  A CTA bus in the middle of exchanging passengers served as Coz’s landing pad. He punctured the roof and almost torpedoed through the floor to the asphalt road. The few passengers inside screamed as they scrambled for the exits. While the people scattered, I hovered over the gaping hole in the bus’s roof.

  Coz’s body appeared still as can be. The impact would have made any human a massacred meat loaf. As angels we possessed a degree of divine protection that made us more durable, to a point.

  I dropped into the bus for a closer look. Since Coz was still human and, with a demon possessing him, I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of the physical punishment he could sustain before dying.

  Coz blinked.

  “How did we come to this?” Coz asked, looking up at me.

  “They took over your life, and you went along for the ride. It’s not that difficult to figure out.”

  “I didn’t know they were doing anything, Jess. It ain’t my fault. They took my brother.”

  “Evil is all about infiltration through subtleties. Everyone is on the hook for their own decisions. I’m here on an assignment and lucky you got right in the middle of it.”

  I reset my ponytail to better prepare for any sudden strike Coz deemed stupid enough to make.

  “What assignment, girl?” Coz said, struggling to his feet. He checked himself over for any injuries.

  “To save Daniel. Why do you want that note?”

  “Ellis said he needed it.”

  “There’s nothing written on that paper that Ellis had to get so bitched up over.”

  Coz’s eyes flashed red when he materialized his dagger. Like a rattlesnake, he struck like lightning. Before I knew what happened, I looked over the nice gash on my thigh. He swung one of his wings, knocked me out of his way and charged out of the bus. I darted after him with my glowing dagger.

  Coz inrepped and flew toward Double N Performance. He descended through the roof then materialized upon landing on the cement floor. I stayed close to his heels and, as we faced each other, his eyes scanned the shop for the GTO. He let out a war cry as he shot by me. The passing wind almost knocked me on my butt. I saw him hover over my dismantled GTO, looking for his prize. With crossed arms, I watched as he searched for the note that wasn’t there.

  “Where is it?” Coz said through a tense jaw.

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “I know a way to help you remember.”

  “Leave him alone, Coz. I’m warning you,” I said.

  Coz smiled as he flew out of the building. I pursued him as we headed back toward the Federal Reserve Bank. Once I caught up with him, I sliced one of his wings with my dagger. He screamed as he spiraled toward the Metra rail yard.

  He crashed onto a locomotive and bounced through the machine shed wall, not far from where I died. Workers scattered out of the way when they saw Coz’s wings fan out. They freaked out big time when they saw mine as I descended in front of Coz.

  Instead of waiting for him to sucker punch me again, I pounced on him and broke his other wing thereby grounding him. He cried in agony. I hurt him, and my heart felt a satisfaction in inflicting pain on him.

  Coz swung his dagger at me and struck my head with the butt of the dagger’s handle. He picked up a contractor-sized tool chest and heaved it at me. I ducked under another locomotive on a huge industrial lift with its rear axles removed.

  The tool chest landed with a thunderous crash. Tools rattled across the shop floor in an eardrum-bursting clatter of steel on concrete.

  Like a bullet, I shot at Coz and smashed him against a steel support I-beam. While he seemed dazed, I hoisted him and flung him out of the shed and into the massive rail yard.

  I left the train shed and walked toward him. His flying days were over. His head meeting steel must’ve jacked his brain something fierce. No longer swayed by his pain, I looked at his terrified eyes as I picked up one of his legs by the foot. When I elbowed his knee, I heard a muffled snap, and he screamed again.

  Coz rolled over the railroad ties between the rails, cradling his knee as though it were his dead child. I grabbed one of his arms and gave it a quick twist. The sound of muffled snaps in his elbow invoked another agonizing scream from his cursed lips.

  The clang of distant heavy bells caught my ear, and I turned toward the Great Overpass Rise and saw several trains coming down the long incline as they returned from another day’s commuter service. Switches moved all across the yard to direct trains to their spur for the night.

  I circled Coz, th
en squatted beside him. With little compassion, I looked over his injuries to make sure he couldn’t escape. My vision returned to normal. The high overhead lights of the rail yard reflected off his tormented eyes like fiber optic bits.

  “Then there were three,” I said. “You, me and a million tons of railroad fun,” I said.

  Down the track, I saw the flashing alternating lights of a locomotive clacking over crossovers as it made its lumbering crawl toward our position. The other two trains rolled to the other side of the yard.

  “Is this what you about, Jessa? Revenge?” Coz asked.

  “Did you forget what you did to me, you psycho? You’re no good anymore, Coz. They got to you, and you didn’t even know it.”

  The locomotive rumbled closer. The heavy weight of its wheels vibrated through the ground and intensified the urgency of whether I’d help Coz or let him negotiate unknown tonnage of rolling cold steel.

  “Come on, girl. You can’t leave me here. Your heart’s good. You got to forgive.”

  “I don’t got to do anything. I got Daniel, and you got a date with destiny.”

  Coz stole a glance at the nearing train engine.

  “Jessa, I’m sorry, all right? Help me off here. I don’t want to die. What do you say?” Coz said, reaching for my hand.

  Tears streamed down Coz’s face. The human side of him understood the direness of his situation. Doubt grew in my heart. The locomotive, a hundred feet away, moved closer. I looked at the train, then at Coz. My heart was never so conflicted on what to do than at this moment.

  “Dammit, Jessa, do something!” he cried.

  It wasn’t what Coz said but the way he said it. I touched my scar. His plea hit my heart and even appealed to my sense of humanity. So, I took his hand and pulled him off the tracks right before the train would’ve ground him into hamburger.

  The train rumbled harmlessly by. Coz gasped at his injuries but seemed to breathe easier.

  “Thanks, Jessa. I owe you,” Coz said.

  The dagger Coz plunged into my side came without warning. I watched in shock as Coz thrust the dagger deep into me. He yanked out the blade, and I stumbled onto my back across a rail.

  Realizing I was in a similar situation before, I managed to get onto all fours. With a newfound resolve, I got to my feet. For the first time, I felt like an angel. Humans weren’t like me. They were like a different species and lower on the food chain.

  When I looked at Coz’s evil eyes, I saw that the Coz I knew died the moment that demon took up residence inside his heart. Without a moment’s hesitation, I materialized a glowing sword and cut off Coz’s arm. Coz fell onto his back, screaming for all he was worth.

  I struggled to stay on my feet as I put the sword tip to his throat.

  “It’s not malicious, Coz. It’s judicious,” I said, plunging the sword through his neck. His eyes widened while a slight gurgling sound passed his lips. I twisted the blade; his body relaxed. That was a suitable end for his evil ass.

  A terrible chill ravaged my body with goosebumps. I looked beside Coz and saw a swirling black ashy vortex open wide. The demon left Coz’s body and scurried into the closing void. Instead of the heat and fire everyone associated with hell, the vortex was freezing cold, devoid of any compassion, sympathy or humanity; the things that made a person human.

  After the demon had crawled in, the vortex closed and the summer heat returned. I stumbled onto my butt, exhausted from a fight of the likes I never experienced.

  The locomotive that almost hit Coz squealed to a stop a few yards down the track. I watched as the engineer, donned in blue jeans and a tan canvas jacket, climbed down from the cab and ran toward me. When he got closer, he looked at me as his face changed, then he looked at Coz’s bloodied body.

  “Dad?” I asked.

  “Jessa, watch out!” Dad said.

  Chapter 36

  I WATCHED AS another spirit rose out of Coz’s body. At first, I didn’t believe it. I never knew any human could host more than two spirits.

  “Ellis,” I said, as his body finished materializing out of Coz’s body. He did that once before when he emerged from an Afghani thug I killed in that desert prison.

  Ellis grabbed me and threw me over several railroad tracks. I tumbled across the cold steel, observant enough to move out of the way of a moving switch. The whole rail yard seemed booby-trapped with switches that would move without warning as trains continued rolling in to the expansive yard.

  I staggered to my feet, cringing at the gash in my side that twinged with every move I made. Ellis materialized a glowing sword. He stepped toward me, intent on killing me.

  “With Coz and Tyrone, I had a play for the angel hierarchy,” Ellis said. “But, I’m not through yet.”

  I never saw Ellis so angry. I didn’t like him from the start. Damn it, I should’ve trusted my instincts more. That was something I could remember going forward in the event I survived this moment of hellish betrayal.

  “What are you doing, Ellis?” I asked.

  Ellis continued stepping toward me, so I materialized my sword. I didn’t know if I stood the slightest chance at beating an archangel like Ellis, but I wasn’t about to bend over for him either.

  “Jessa, you’re too stupid to be an archangel,” Ellis said. “If you had any brains, you would’ve made me from the start. Instead, I played you like the moron you are.”

  “Forget the Book of Ancients, Ellis,” I said. “What did the Powers ever do to you?”

  The phrase that confession was good for the soul applied to us angels too. It had a great healing power that even those with evil hearts appreciated.

  “They denied my promotion to Power-class and wouldn’t restore my bloodline, to name a couple things,” Ellis said.

  “You’re holding a grudge because you didn’t get what you wanted out of life? Isn’t that a little childish?” I asked.

  “There’s no pain like watching your family die while the power to prevent it looks the other way.”

  “How did your family die?”

  Getting to the root of Ellis’s problem made me understand why my ARV was so impossible to complete.

  “Influenza. 1918. With the Book of Ancients, I can prevent their deaths, but it’s not enough,” Ellis said.

  “Look, I can’t bring people back from the dead. It’s over for them. They’re in Heaven anyway, so why are you so angry?”

  “They’re all in Hell!”

  Now it made sense. I was too new to the protector game to consider that some angels had loved ones in hell. As far as I knew, my ancestors were all in Heaven, but it was possible, even likely, that some weren’t.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “What do you think was on that note you needed? It was only a love note.”

  “It was a divine pass, a permission to read the Book of Ancients.”

  Now things gelled in my jumbled brain.

  “If you had the permission, how did it end up with me?” I asked.

  If I survived, I thought I’d make a good detective, but that dream seemed far away.

  “With outside help, I obtained a permission without the approval of the Thrones,” Ellis said. “Then, I’d use divine endorsement to reunite with my family again.”

  “Outside help? There’re other angel hierarchies out there besides ours?” I asked.

  “Yes. Shit, Jessa, you have a lot to learn,” Ellis said.

  “So, you got an angel from another hierarchy to help you get around security and gain unauthorized access? You’re nothing but a crook! A spineless hacker!”

  Ellis nodded and a grin emerged. I never imagined that the scope of angels extended outside the realm of humans. That meant that aliens had angels too. Holy shit!

  “So, if you already had the permission, why did you drag me into your stupid game?” I asked.

  “If I got caught with it, they wouldn’t even bother sending me to the Outer Edge, so I stored it in your pretty little heart, Jessa. Along the way, when you wrote
that love letter to Daniel, my friend arranged to transfer the permission to that piece of paper without you or anyone in Hali knowing it.”

  “Well ain’t you the crafty little prick,” I said.

  Ellis’s face flushed as he clenched his teeth.

  “Okay, then what was the point of robbing banks?” I continued. “Wouldn’t Coz’s or Daniel’s death defeat your purpose?”

  “The emotional impact of an evil task like robbery or murder would solidify Coz as a major demon and help me get my family back.”

  “Why do you need Coz to be a demon? He never would’ve made it to Hali,” I said.

  “Coz could’ve acted as an agent in Hell to locate and bring back my family. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that when bad intentions prospered while possessing an innocent human, the demon spawned is outside my control. That was a critical fail-safe on the part of Lucifer I never knew about and a mistake I’ll never make again.”

  As Ellis got closer, I raised my sword. In preparation for a fight, another swirling black vortex opened in the ground beside Ellis. Two demons emerged who looked like Coz and Akio.

  “Now that my plans are out, it’s time to close this chapter,” Ellis said. “I’m taking you with me, Jessa. Together, we’ll succeed. All I have to do is kill you, send you through turnaround and redirect your course of action.”

  Dad stood by my side and prepared to fight.

  “Jessa, you’re a watcher. There’s no way you can beat an archangel and two demons by yourself,” Ellis said, shaking his head. “Let me put you through turnaround. It’s a painless process.”

  “Dad, maybe Ellis’s offer is the test I have to pass to finish this ARV,” I said, as if I had any chance of getting my promotion.

  “Forget it,” Ellis said. “You disclosed everything about yourself to your ward and so proved you can’t do something as simple as keeping your mouth shut. Like I said many times before, you’re not cut out to be an archangel.”

  He was right. I broke every condition of my agreement but stopped short of telling every human that angels were real and messed with their lives on a daily basis.