by L. A. Banks
“Yeah, man,” the other youth agreed. “You don’t know what he’s carrying if he comes at you, and he definitely ain’t got no money—least nowhere you wanna touch it when he pulls it out.”
“Where your clothes at, son?” the tall, walnut-hued kid shouted at Azrael, then gave the angel a menacing grin.
“I have none,” Azrael replied calmly, turning to face him. “Will you help me? I am not from the enemy of mankind.”
All three young men burst out laughing. The tall one brought a short, white object to his lips, then lit it with a small blue cylinder that produced a flame when his thumb clicked it. He shook his head and took a long drag, passing the strange-smelling white stick to his pale friend first.
“You in the wrong part of town to be begging for clothes and talking like Shakespeare and shit, son. That’s a real good way for a brother to get beat down in North Central.”
Frustration and a jolt of confusion shot through Azrael. “If we are indeed brothers—more importantly, our brother’s keeper—then why would you not help me cover myself? I have done you no harm, and hidden within your raiment you have more than enough resources, not to mention knowledge, to assist a being in need. I can sense it, therefore I do not understand.” Azrael stepped forward, emboldened by the new surge of human emotions pulsing through his veins. The injustice of it all made him irate. “In fact, I do not understand why my shame and heartbreak at being separated from the Source is so amusing to you. Where is your compassion?”
“Oh, shit . . . this motherfucker is straight trippin’, man!” The pale kid handed off the glowing white stick to the darker of his friends as he blew smoke out of his nose and began coughing.
“Awww . . . man,” the darker kid muttered, shaking his head as he accepted the pungent offering. “You done did it now, son. Don’t nobody clock my boy’s cheddar.”
The leader thrust a hand in his jacket and pulled out a metal object and pointed it at Azrael, laughing. “You know what we got for beggin’ fools round here in my territory, son? We got a cap to bust in your crazy ass—so you better take that bull to somebody who’s trying to hear it. That’s what I got hidden in my whatever you call it, a nine, aw’ight!”
“Yo, man, this bum ain’t worth the hassle from po-po or doing time for, even if he is stupid. Don’t shoot the bastard...you gonna seriously blow my high if we gotta run or dump a body.” The darker kid took another drag on the disappearing white object in his hand and shook his head again. “This train needs to hurry up and come on before some real sick shit goes down.”
Instinct told Azrael that what was pointed at him was a weapon that could do him great harm. Fury flooded his veins. He was unarmed! Defenseless, as far as these young wolves knew...yet they would threaten him with death simply for being a poor vagrant. A beggar in need, as far as they knew.
“Temper your words and your actions with wisdom or die!” he shouted, his voice a sudden, booming echo off the tile walls as he pointed at the young men before him.
The three boys looked at each other for a second, then burst out laughing.
“Oh, shit,” the leader said, walking in a circle, raking his fingers through his wild, woolly hair. “This bitch is straight crazy!”
Something fragile snapped within Azrael. Time felt as if it stood still as he moved between the temporal beats of earth moments to cross the platform and grab the offending leader’s wrist. Supernatural strength arced through him like a sudden current. Never had he felt so alive.
Twisting up the leader’s wrist quickly, he lifted the man-child off his feet with the weapon still in his hand and pointing toward the ceiling. A loud sound discharged as time snapped back into normal earth rhythm and a harsh sulfuric smell bit into Azrael’s sinuses. The scent had come from the weapon and now lingered. The boy he held above his head continued twisting and yelling, as his friends ducked down, shouting.
“Watch the gun, man!”
“Stop shooting!”
Now Azrael had language to describe what was happening. He also had a weapon in case more human evil-doers crossed his path tonight. He closed his eyes for a moment, summoning discipline: Thou shalt not murder had always been mistranslated as “thou shalt not kill”—and on this mission against the darkness, a righteous kill for self-defense was indeed allowed.
The desire to end their lives was so seductive, so tempting, as adrenaline thrummed through his system. But a small voice inside him reminded him of the elders’ warnings: The taking of a human life should never be enjoyable. These boys’ deaths would not be necessary, unless they decided to attack again. Azrael opened his eyes. His mission came back into focus.
Stripping the weapon away from the leader, Azrael yanked the young man’s jacket from his body as though disrobing a child, then shoved the offender hard. The kid hit the ground and scrambled away from Azrael with new terror and respect in his eyes.
“Each of you who have much to repent, be Good Samaritans and donate to my righteous cause,” Azrael said in a threatening murmur, slapping his chest with a broad, flat palm. “Or take a glance at where you are headed if you continue on your current path of murder and mayhem.” He stared into their eyes, watching them recoil in horror as he gave them a glimpse of the dark side within their minds. “It is your choice. It is always your choice.”
Chapter 1
Celeste could feel the darkness within the apartment closing in on her as she watched Brandon roll a joint on the cluttered coffee table before him. An old soda bottle, several beer cans, an ancient Chinese-food carton, charred reefer seeds, and an over-flowing ashtray littered his makeshift weed-prep area.
His eyes were hard as he glared at the baseball game on television and licked the edge of the rolling paper he held. She absently stood and went over to the small kitchen pass-through and squeezed a nearly empty pack of Newports, glad that a couple cigarettes were left in it. The stench of aging garbage filled her nose, but given his foul mood, asking Brandon to take it out would be suicide. If she took it out herself, he’d start yelling about where she was going and would no doubt accuse her of trying to sneak out or something stupid. She’d deal with it tomorrow, like everything else.
She cut Brandon a sidelong glance. A joint wasn’t going to chill him out tonight. It rarely did. Two years of Friday-night fights told her that. History was what it was and rarely changed unless something drastic went down. No, a joint wasn’t what he wanted and it wouldn’t keep him mellow. Only a few things would, and she wasn’t one of them anymore. Hadn’t been in a long time.
As quietly as possible, Celeste extracted a cigarette from the pack. The last thing she wanted to do was start a big argument over whose pack she was taking a smoke from. It was hers, but Brandon never seemed to remember anything that she contributed to their so-called household. And reminding him was dangerous, depending on his mood. She’d decided after their first really bad fight that it just wasn’t worth the risk. Tonight it definitely wasn’t worth it.
Dampening down her anger, lest she say something to ignite his rage, she walked over to the cabinets to find a glass for what was left of the vodka she’d purchased. She didn’t turn on the lights. That would only hurt her eyes and make the roaches scatter. Right now she didn’t want to see them any more than she wanted to contend with Brandon.
“You got any money?”
Celeste barely responded. “No. I told you before, I’m broke.”
“Then what good are you, bitch? You never have any money, like I’m supposed to always take care of your skinny ass.” He shot her a withering glare over his shoulder but didn’t get up. “You got money for your god-damned liquor, though, right?”
She didn’t reply, just fetched a short rocks glass from the cabinet, waiting a beat while whatever was crawling around scurried to a new hiding place.
“Don’t have an answer to that one, do you?”
Celeste didn’t tempt fate by looking up at him. He would have caught the flippant attitude in her expression, which w
ould have been enough to propel him off the sofa for a confrontation. Instead, she kept her head down and her lips sealed. If there had been no threat of a severe beat down, she would have had plenty to say—like, “If you go to work every day washing dishes at the pizza shop and don’t pay nary a bill around here on a regular basis, then why doesn’t your mangy ass have any money?” That was the silent question.
But it would have been foolish to ask that question out loud even on the best of days. Her five-foot-six, 130-pound frame was no match for his six-two, 180-pound one. Simple math said to suck it up and shut up.
“Thought so, bitch.”
She remained mute and just went to the freezer, extracted her bottle, and poured a little more vodka into her glass than originally intended, then as quietly as possible added some ice.
Muttering obscenities under his breath, Brandon went back to the game and his task of managing his weed. “Yeah, your crazy ass ain’t stupid enough to say something back to me. I know that much.”
Keeping Brandon in her peripheral vision, Celeste tucked the stolen cigarette into a loose fold she’d created under her tank-top hem and soundlessly poured a little more of the clear, potent remedy into the glass to top off the ice. Trying to move as quietly as a shadow, she edged her way toward the kitchen threshold to head down the long, dark, narrow hallway.
“Where you going?” Brandon’s attention suddenly snapped in her direction again.
Celeste froze. “To pee,” she said flatly, without any change in her inflection.
He turned back to the game again and lit his joint. She relaxed and edged her way out of the dark kitchen to hurry down the hall before he decided to change his mind and pursue her. Baseball wasn’t all that interesting; fighting with her had become his national pastime, especially on a Friday night before the first of the month.
If her SSI check had come to her aunt Denise’s house, then she would have been guaranteed some measure of peace. Aunt Niecey, who didn’t believe in direct deposit or technology, would have cashed the check for her as she always did and then paid Celeste’s rent and utility bills directly with a money order off that—right there at the check-cashing agency, something Brandon couldn’t say jack about. Her aunt, a robust woman who was built like a tank and didn’t play, was the only living relative in the family responsible and compassionate enough to take on the challenge of being Celeste’s guardian as long as Celeste was claiming mental disability.
Celeste took a cool sip of vodka and kept walking. At least somebody had her back, even if her mama was dead and her daddy was in a crack house or dead somewhere.
Besides, Aunt Niecey would take out her earrings to scrap over a principle in a heartbeat as if she were still fifteen years old, if it came to that. They said her aunt was the wild one of all the Jackson girls. But Denise Jackson was the only one who’d lived to see her three score and plus some and at eighty-odd years old was still spry and in her right mind. Strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, and bad living had taken everybody else’s parents. Celeste took a deeper swig from her rocks glass as she walked through the darkness, feeling the warming effects of the vodka. She didn’t care that some of her cousins said auntie was too mean for the devil to take. Her cousins didn’t know Auntie’s kind heart.
It was simply that Aunt Niecey didn’t brook no bullshit, as her aunt so colorfully claimed. Celeste’s cousins, and all their badass kids, had plenty of drama going on 24-7—not that she could talk. But one had to respect her aunt’s position and proclamation. Denise Jackson could back up whatever she said with authority. That’s why they didn’t like Aunt Niecey so much, even though every last one of them was too much of a punk to say that to her face.
So, who else but fearless Aunt Niecey was gonna be the legal guardian of someone diagnosed with schizophrenia, chronic depression, and substance abuse after a violent nervous breakdown? That woman was prayed up, had raised up all the broken children in the family, and also packed heat, just in case her Jesus was a little slow to intervene or respond. According to her aunt, God helped those who helped themselves.
But regardless of all that, the feds and the state required a guardian in matters such as these, and her aunt had stepped up in return for a small, monthly inconvenience fee. That was fair, the way Celeste saw it. Not even freedom was free.
The thing that really scared her was the question of what she would ever do if Aunt Niecey was gone. Her aunt was a lifeline. Yet her aunt was moving slower year by year. It was only a matter of time. Fatigue was written all over the poor woman’s face, just as Arthur was twisting her hands and feet into knots. Arthritis was the only thing to slow down the pure force of nature that her aunt had been.
Celeste took a huge gulp of vodka and shuddered as it went down. It was bad enough coming home to her mother dead on the kitchen floor from a stroke when she was in middle school. She didn’t want to be the one to find her aunt like that, too. It was a fervent prayer, not that she thought God ever listened to her. If He did, then He wouldn’t have allowed half of the things that had happened to her.
She just hoped for the sake of her aunt that whoever was in charge up above would make her aunt’s passing smooth and easy. Denise Jackson, a weary warrior who claimed to be a soldier for God, deserved some respite from this cruel world. That was one of the reasons Celeste didn’t tell her aunt half of the crap that Brandon pulled. It would probably give the auntie who’d raised her a heart attack where she stood.
That thought frightened Celeste as much as the things she sometimes saw looking at her from behind people’s supposedly normal faces.
Brandon got up from the sofa and went into the kitchen to bring the entire bottle of vodka back into the living room with him. The pungent smell of reefer wafted down the hall to surround her. Celeste paused, judging whether it was safe to move. He didn’t seem to notice how much she’d taken for herself and just turned the cold, freezer-stored bottle up to his mouth. Rat bastard. That was her bottle.
For a few moments she drew silent comfort from knowing that all she had to do was say the word, and her aunt would get Brandon put out. The big question she wrestled with was, what was stopping her from going that extra mile?
Fear claimed her as she timidly sipped her drink and then continued walking toward the bathroom. It was almost as if a dark force had tethered her to someone that clearly despised her, yet she couldn’t break free of him even when everyone from her doctors to her family said Brandon Jacobs was part of her addiction. But it was deeper than that; only she couldn’t talk about it. Not without their thinking she was crazy.
She hugged the wall as she edged toward the bathroom, half-terrified of the dark, half-terrified of what she might see without her meds. Her footsteps were light and unsure, like those of the mice that used the cover of darkness to keep them safe while they pillaged the cabinets.
Brandon wasn’t a demon, just a sick bastard she lived with. She had to believe that to hold on to a fragile thread of reality. Celeste mentally repeated the things her doctor had told her in their last session. She had the power to make changes in her life, including leaving Brandon...even if he swore he’d kill her, though? She never talked to anybody about that part. Not even to her aunt Niecey.
That was the $50 million question that neither her therapist nor the psychiatrist could answer. Brandon had even come to a session and passed their scrutiny in a way she had never been able to. Like a Boy Scout he swore he never said the things he said, and they’d strangely believed it along with every other lie he told. She’d gotten so outraged that she’d screamed and shouted; that only made them believe him more, since he remained calm with tears in his eyes, pretending to be innocent and claiming that he’d cut his own arm off before ever hitting her. Yeah, right.
Silent fury swirled within Celeste as she kept walking and praying for a night of peace. Most times she was so confused that she couldn’t tell whether Brandon had said the things she thought he did. All she felt was terror when he spoke to her. How d
id one explain that to people who lived so far removed from her reality?
It was impossible to make them understand that sometimes Brandon’s voice sounded like growls and his eyes seemed to glow red in the dark. Celeste glanced over her shoulder and hastened her quiet footsteps. Everyone told her that was crazy and impossible. That it was her illness making her imagine things. Worse yet, when she’d try to show them her cuts and bruises from his attacks, by the time she got to the hospital there was strangely never any evidence that he’d hit her.
No one believed her except her prayed-up aunt, who claimed she knew a demon when she saw one. But both the psychiatrist and the therapist were almost ready to commit Aunt Niecey when she’d once admitted that, so she never talked about it again, leastwise not to jeopardize the SSI check coming in—$1,144 a month was nothing to sneeze at.
Celeste rounded the threshold of their tiny bathroom and shut the door, quickly clicking on the light. Just breathe and don’t look in the mirror. Demons lived in the mirror.
She opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed a disposable lighter, and sat on the windowsill with her sneakers on the toilet, leaning out of the window to light up. Carefully balancing her rocks glass on the radiator top, she cupped her hand against the cool, early-September breeze and brought the end of her cigarette to the flame.
Taking a long, satisfying drag on the menthol butt, she glanced at the open medicine cabinet. Would have been nice to have a little something to go with the vodka to take the edge off. But Brandon had long sold her meds. He did every month. Haldol and Cogentin had street value. She was so morose now that she almost laughed, thinking maybe she should just go all the way out of her mind and let them put her on Paxil and lithium, which fetched an even better price in the hood. But common sense told her that if she wanted to keep Brandon off her back, it was better not to even trip about her missing meds, and she wouldn’t as long as his selling them chilled him out.
