Angels on Fire

by Nancy A. Collins

  Joth was standing talking to a woman dressed in a red jacket identical to Uxbridge’s. The woman was holding a little girl dressed in a red corduroy jumper in her arms, her face twisted in anger and hurt, as if she was fighting to keep from bursting into tears. Whatever it was Joth was saying to the woman, it was clearly something she wasn’t happy hearing.

  Uxbridge jostled his way across the crowded room, his hands balling and unballing into fists. He grabbed Joth by the shoulder, spinning the angel around to face him.

  “Ohhhh shit,” Lucy whispered under her breath, and hurried to intervene.

  “What the hell are you doing with my wife?” demanded the gallery owner at the top of his voice.

  Joth stared placidly at Uxbridge. “I am not doing anything with your wife,” it replied evenly.

  “That’s not what it looked like to me!” Uxbridge moved to put himself between his wife and Joth. “Carla—are you all right? Did he do anything to you or Penny?” He reached out to put his arm around his wife’s shoulder, only to have her side-step his embrace.

  “Don’t you touch me!” Carla Uxbridge spat at her husband. “Don’t you touch me or Penny, you bastard!”

  “Watch your voice. We’re in public, remember?” Uxbridge said, speaking through a clenched smile. “You’re drunk again, Carla. You know how you get when you’re drunk!”

  “I’ve had some drinks, but that doesn’t mean I’m drunk! I know when I’m drunk! And I’m not drunk!” Carla insisted. She tossed back the cascade of ash-blonde hair out of her face, nearly throwing herself off-balance in the process.

  Uxbridge quickly snatched Penny from his wife’s arms. “Come on, sweetie! Mommy’s tired and needs to go home...” The gallery owner turned to face Joth, his voice trembling with rage. “And as for you—! I don’t know who you are, but I never want to see you anywhere near my wife or child ever again!”

  “Joth—what’s going on here?” asked Lucy, who had just managed to shoulder her way through the crowd.

  “Mrs. Uxbridge asked me what I knew of her husband, and I told her,” explained Joth, matter-of-factly.

  “You know this man?” Uxbridge growled, fixing Lucy with a hostile glare.

  “H-he’s, um, my roomie,” she stammered.

  Uxbridge repositioned his daughter into his left arm and shoved his right hand towards Lucy. “Give me back my card!” he said brusquely.

  “What?”

  “My card—I want my card back, please!” he said, snapping his fingers for emphasis.

  Lucy was acutely aware that virtually everyone in the gallery had now fallen silent and were watching the little scene between herself and Uxbridge. Her face turned as red as the gallery owner’s jacket as she reached into her purse and retrieved the business card. Uxbridge snatched it from her and viciously tore it up, scattering the pieces in the air, then grabbed his wife by the hand and, still carrying his daughter in his arms, stormed out of the gallery. All heads turned to watch the trio pass. Penny Uxbridge, her eyes far sadder than a child’s should ever be, surreptitiously lifted her hand to wave a shy farewell to Joth as they left.

  The moment Uxbridge and his family left the room, a couple hundred voices began talking at once, resuming their dropped threads of conversation.

  Lucy stared down at the ragged fragments of red cardstock scattered at her feet, then glanced up at Joth. “What did you say to that asshole’s wife?” she asked after a long moment.

  “That her husband molests their daughter,” Joth replied flatly.

  Lucy flinched. She didn’t know what was worse, that Joth had stated the fact so baldly to the Uxbridge woman or the knowledge that the angel was incapable of lying.

  She looked back down at what was left of the business card on the floor. “Fuck it,” she sighed. “I didn’t want a creep like that selling my art anyway. Right, Joth?”

  The angel was nowhere to be seen. She turned around in a complete circle, thinking she might spot its golden head amongst the crowd, but saw nothing that even remotely resembled it. Just as she was about to panic, Ezrael popped back up, smiling broadly, a drink clutched in either hand.

  “Sorry I was away so long—! I ran into an old friend of mine from the Factory days! We stepped outside to play a little catch-up. Did I miss anything? Where’s Joth?”

  “You mean he’s not with you? Oh, Jesus—Ez, Meresin’s here! He came over and talked to me just after you left!”

  Ezrael frowned. “Yes, I know he’s here. I saw him when I came back in. He’s over there, talking to Nevin.” The Muse pointed in the direction of the front door by way of explanation. Sure enough, the daemon was chatting up Nevin. Nearby, Terry Spanner—accompanied by a knot of rubberneckers—was talking to Gwenda’s cleavage. Joth was nowhere to be seen.

  “You don’t think Meresin did anything to Joth, do you?”

  Ezrael shook his head. “He’s no fool when it comes to the rules of engagement. He wouldn’t go anything in a public space. But if Joth has gone wandering off again, the last thing we want to do is to alert Meresin to that fact. If we’re lucky, Joth merely grew bored and simply returned to its roost—your apartment. I’ll head back to see if that’s the case...” As he turned to go, there was a sudden flash of light followed by a distant rumble that rattled the pictures on the wall. “Looks like we’re in for a thunderstorm,” Ezrael observed.

  A few feet away a woman in a backless satin dress squealed as raindrops splashed onto her shoulders. The Ars Novina’s manager came hurrying out of his office in the back, scowling at the rain drops falling onto the floor of his gallery.

  “Who the fuck opened that thing?” he demanded, scratching his head as he stared at the open skylight twenty feet overhead.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Honey—you awake?”

  Carla Uxbridge muttered and rolled onto her side, causing her dress to hike itself over her hip, but did not open her eyes or otherwise respond to her husband’s voice. Page Uxbridge stood in the door of their bedroom and scowled at his wife as she lay sprawled across the bed half-dressed, her makeup smearing the pillowcase.

  Tonight was little different from any other—except for her uncustomary flare of anger at the opening. Carla was a silly drunk. She got loud and sloppy, but seldom anything more. She was rarely angry—and she certainly never aimed it at him. But tonight had been different, for some reason. Something in the way she looked at him—the way she pulled away from him—worried Uxbridge.

  Whatever the reason, it clearly had something to do with the strange-looking Oriental youth she’d been talking to at the opening. Uxbridge had tried to force her into telling him what had gone on between them, but Carla refused to elaborate on it during the car ride back home. Of course, the moment he unlocked the door, she’d headed straight for the liquor cabinet. As usual.

  Satisfied that the Rohypnol he’d slipped in her bottle of tequila had done its trick, he left the bedroom. The lofted space over the living room of their Central Park condo, accessible via a spiral staircase, served as his home office. Uxbridge paused in mid-step as a clap of thunder from the storm outside caused the metal steps to vibrate underneath his feet.

  The loft was a small, cramped space with barely enough room for a desk and a book case, but he liked being able to look down from his perch and see where his family was and what they were doing at all times. It made him feel in control of his situation. And as he had learned long ago, control was everything. His office was his private preserve. No one else was allowed up here— not even Penny, and especially not Carla.

  Uxbridge had long since grown weary of his wife, but he tolerated her for no other reason than to insure his access to his daughter. He had made the mistake of losing control with his last wife, Yvonne, and she had used the leverage to take Patty away from him. He’d sworn such a thing would never happen again. He eased himself into his high-backed leather executive’s chair and opened the desk’s lower drawer, taking out the bottle of scotch he kept there. Scotch had been his f
ather’s favorite poison. As he poured himself a stiff drink, he reflected on how thankless a task being a father and husband truly was.

  Penny was his little girl. His flesh and blood. She was his. Carla might be her mother, but he was her father! He was the one who provided for the clothes on her back, the food in her mouth, the roof over her head. Carla may have carried Penny in her belly for nine months, but he was the one who put her there, by damn! He worked hard making sure that they got everything they might possibly want. He was entitled to their love, to their obedience, to their respect. And it was only right that he take what was his due.

  It was important for a man to protect his family—and the best way to protect them was through control. By controlling them he showed how much he cared for them. How else could he prove how good and strong a husband and father he truly was? And through controlling their lives, he protected those he loved most from their most dangerous enemy—themselves.

  A man had to watch for signs of betrayal from the women in his life. His father had taught him that. Like most children, Uxbridge had labored under the delusion that his mother was a saint and that his sisters were good girls. But his father showed him how he should never trust the appearance of innocence, the semblance of purity. One day, when he was ten years old, his father took him to a fancy hotel and made him sit in the lobby and watch as his wife, Uxbridge’s mother, met with a strange man in the hotel bar, then retired upstairs.

  “You see, son? You see?” his father had whispered in his ear. “They’re never to be trusted. None of them. They’re all whores. Every last one of them! You have to watch them every minute, every god-damn minute of the day, or they will destroy you.”

  Uxbridge’s thoughts turned back to the stranger at the gallery. He had never seen the man before, although now that he thought about it, his features were not unlike those of the man his mother had met at the hotel bar, so many years ago. Strange. Where had he gotten the idea the other man was Oriental? Of course, Carla insisted she did not know the stranger—that she had never laid eyes on him before—but Uxbridge did not believe her. The other man was her lover and he had approached Carla at the gallery and threatened to expose their illicit liaison. That would certainly explain the look of dread he had seen in her eyes.

  The photographer—the Bender woman—claimed the other man was her roomie. Perhaps he’d been over-hasty in his reaction to her. He should have pumped her for more information. Perhaps she had seen Carla with her ‘roomie’? And even if she hadn’t, it probably wouldn’t be hard to coerce her into claiming otherwise. Artists were always willing to stab one another in the back if they thought it might land them a one-man show. Still, it was worth checking out. He scribbled the photographer’s name on his appointment blotter as a reminder to himself. If he could manufacture enough proof that Carla was having an affair and that she was an unfit mother, then things would become far simpler for him. There were enough artists and art collectors on the scene who owed him favors and who would be more than happy to provide anecdotes concerning Carla’s public drunkenness. With the proper lawyer, he could finally rid himself of Carla and have Penny all to himself: just the two of them.

  Penny didn’t like the storm. It was scary and made it hard for her to sleep. She especially didn’t like the thunder, which sounded like an angry animal roaring in the sky. The only good thing about the thunder tonight was that it made it hard for her to hear Mommy and Daddy yelling at one another.

  She wondered if tonight was going to be a sleepy night or a night where Daddy would come and tuck her back into bed. She hoped it was going to be a sleepy night. She didn’t like it when Daddy tucked her back into bed.

  Tap-tap-tap

  Penny sat up at the sound of someone—or something—rapping on her window. She gasped as a lightning flash lit up the sky, illuminating the outline of a winged figure crouching on the ledge outside her bedroom. But instead of screaming in fear, she broke into a smile.

  “Mr. Angel!”

  Penny hopped out of bed and hurried over to the window. She climbed on top of her toy chest and opened the latch. There was a gust of rainwater and wind as the angel climbed over the sill.

  “Hello, Penny,” smiled Joth.

  “Hello, Mr. Angel!”

  The elohim shook itself like a wet dog, sending water flying. Penny giggled as the droplets splashed her.

  “How did you know where I live?”

  “I followed you.”

  “Why did you follow me?”

  Joth stared at the little deathling standing before it, both entranced and distressed by the color of her halo—and the darkness that surrounded it. “I don’t know why,” the angel replied truthfully. “All I know is that it was important that I do so.”

  Uxbridge closed his eyes as the scotch loosened the knots hidden deep inside himself. He could see his daughter in his mind’s eye—waiting for him in her narrow child’s bed—and, as always, he became aroused. There was something about how she looked so helpless and pink and innocent that fanned his lust. But he knew better than anyone how appearances could betray the eye, deceive the on-looker. It was all a lie. She was a slut, just like her mother was a slut. Just like his mother was a slut. The truth of her whorish nature was between his legs. If she wasn’t a slut, he would not get stiff. It was only through his love, his guidance, could she be saved from becoming a whore. It took a father’s love, a father’s strong hand to make her be good. She was there—at the end of the hall—waiting for him. Waiting for him to make her a good girl again. Waiting for him to tuck her back into bed.

  Uxbridge returned the bottle to its hiding place in the desk and proceeded to wobble down the loft staircase, answering the siren’s call that only he could hear. But as he neared his daughter’s room, he thought he heard Penny speaking out loud. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, just the sing-song of her voice. Uxbridge’s anger began to rise. She was supposed to be asleep, not up talking to her dolls. She knew that perfectly well, but she was disobeying the rules. Disobeying him. But as his hand closed on the doorknob of Penny’s room, Uxbridge was startled by what sounded like a man’s voice responding to his daughter’s childish banter.

  He frowned. Could it be she was already deceiving him, as his mother had deceived his father?

  Uxbridge jerked opened the door to his daughter’s room. It was much like any preschool child’s bedroom—decorated with stuffed animals, Barbie dolls, Tinkertoys and the like. Penny’s bed was a child-sized canopy with a Little Mermaid comforter and sheets. On a nearby nightstand was a night-light shaped to look like a conch sea-shell. Penny was sitting up in bed, dressed in her pink flannel nightie, looking in the direction of the window. Uxbridge followed his daughter’s gaze, but outside of a fluttering curtain, all he saw was a child-sized easel, complete with oversized paper and a selection of watercolors and felt-tip markers. The picture on the easel showed a stick-figure Daddy with a big, sharp smile, looming like a giant over the stick-figure Mommy and stick-figure Penny.

  “What’s going on in here?” he demanded, looking around suspiciously. “Who were you talking to, Penny?”

  His daughter’s eyes grew large with fear and she pulled her knees in tight to her chest, pushing herself against the headboard of her bed. She was trying to make herself small as a mouse; as if by curling in on herself she could somehow disappear.

  “I was just talking to the angel, Daddy,” she said in a tiny, frightened voice.

  Uxbridge’s frown deepened. “Angel?”

  “He followed me home, Daddy, honest! You’re not mad at me are you?”

  “Penny, stop lying to me!” Uxbridge said brusquely, the edge on his voice sharp enough to slice skin. “There’s no such thing as angels!”

  “But I saw him, Daddy! He’s got wings! He flew in my window!”

  “Don’t argue with me, young lady!” Uxbridge snapped. “You know better than to contradict me! If I tell you something doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist!”

 
“But, Daddy—!”

  Uxbridge licked his lips and stepped forward. He was used to her delaying tactics. Like Scheherazade, she hoped to evade her fate by distracting him with fanciful stories. One night it’s leprechauns in the closet or bears hiding in the toy box, now its angels flying in her window.

  “Stop lying to me, Penny! You know how Daddy hates it when you lie to him,” he said, his breathing ragged and heavy in his chest. “You don’t want to make Daddy mad at you, do you?”

  “No,” Penny whimpered as her father’s shadow fell across the foot of her bed. It was impossible to tell if she was simply answering his question or begging him to stop. She might as well have been talking to her make-believe angel, for all the good it would do her. All Uxbridge could hear was his father’s voice, urging him to claim his right as creator and protector of the flesh before him.

  As he reached the foot of the bed, there was a sudden flash of lightning so bright it momentarily dazzled him, followed by a clap of thunder so loud it rattled the entire building like a giant’s hand. As his eyes readjusted to the gloom, Uxbridge glimpsed the outline of a man. At first he thought it was his own shadow cast before him. Then he realized the shadow had eyes.

  “H-how did you get in here—?!” he demanded, trying to sound more angry than frightened. He took an involuntary step backward, looking about frantically for some sign of how a stranger could have entered room nine stories up without his noticing. “W-what do you want?”

  “Leave her alone,” said the intruder, his voice mixing ominously with the peal of thunder rolling across the city.

  Uxbridge recognized the intruder as the other man Carla had spoken to at the gallery. So she did know him, after all! No doubt this man had a key to the apartment and had used it to sneak in through the service door in the kitchen. How dare this stranger invade his home! He had to regain to control of the situation and he had to do it fast.

  “Get away from my daughter!” Uxbridge barked. “Get out of my house! Get out before I call the cops!”