Angels on Fire

by Nancy A. Collins

  Still, he had to admit he’d miss the sex, if not Lucy herself. No matter how much of a doormat she tried to turn herself into, she somehow managed to still make him feel inadequate as an artist. Gwenda, on the other hand, posed no such threat. It was only matter of time before he could open a studio and sit around all day coming up with ideas for art. All he’d have to do was hire struggling young artists to actually do the physical work of painting, sculpting, photographing and drawing while he signed his name at the bottom of canvasses and checks. Who knows—he might even offer Lucy a job working for him, once she finally got rid of that weirdo Joth.

  “Nevin—are you coming to bed sweetie?” Gwenda called after him from the bedroom. “I’m waiting!”

  “I’ll be right there directly, honey,” he replied, turning from the window. “I just want to finish my champagne.”

  “Why don’t you bring it into the bedroom with you, silly?”

  Nevin sighed and rolled his eyes like a boy being called inside to do his homework. “Okay, sweetheart—as you wish!” As he reached for the silver wine bucket, Nevin thought he heard the thrumming of wings just outside the window. No doubt the neighborhood cats had disrupted the covey of pigeons nesting under the eaves again…

  Suddenly there was a deafening crash as the window exploded inward in a shower of glass and splintered wood. Nevin was stunned to see a man, naked save for a pair of tattered jeans, crouched in the middle of the Oriental carpet covering the floor. The intruder rose with the grace and deliberation of a ballet dancer, shaking fragments of glass from his shoulder-length mane. Nevin recognized Joth instantly.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here!?!” he yelled. “Are you out of your fuckin’ mind, you fuckin’ mook! Did Lucy put you up to rappelling down the side of the fuckin’ building like Bruce Willis?”

  Joth fixed him with a stare that caused the artist to freeze in his tracks. The angel shot forward with the speed of a leopard going for a blooded gazelle, striking Nevin squarely in the chest with its open hands. The artist flew backwards as if struck with a sledgehammer, flipping over a chair and landing hard on the floor.

  Joth swooped down after him, grabbing Nevin and lifting him bodily off the floor with one hand before hurling him headlong across the room. Nevin smashed into the wall with enough force to knock a Keith Haring original off its picture-hook.

  “Nevin—what the hell is all this noise—?” Gwenda snapped as she strode angrily out of the bedroom, dressed only in a black lace chemise and panties. She screamed at the sight of the strange half-naked man standing in the middle of her living room. She gave a second, smaller scream as Nevin staggered to his feet, blood pouring from his nose like an open tap.

  “Call the cops!” he barked.

  Joth glanced indifferently over its shoulder at Gwenda, then resumed its attack, grabbing the artist’s left arm and twisting it sharply in its socket.

  “Don’t just stand there staring at me, you stupid bitch!” Nevin shrieked at the top of his lungs. “Call 911!”

  As purple and black spots exploded behind his eyes, it seemed to Nevin as if Joth’s face twisted and blurred, sprouting horns and fangs and eyes that glowed like St. Elmo ’s fire. He could even make out huge, black wings growing out of his attacker’s shoulders.

  “Get away from him, you bastard!” Gwenda yelled, throwing herself at the stranger.

  Joth snarled and batted Gwenda with one of its pinions hard enough to put her on the floor and keep her there. It then returned its attention to its prey. Nevin’s face was pinched so tightly the creases in his features looked like they had been carved by a knife.

  “W-why?” Nevin gasped through his pain. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “You made her cry,” Joth said, as if this explained everything.

  A taxi screamed up to the curb in front of Gwenda’s co-op and fishtailed to a stop. Ezrael and Lucy quickly piled out, pausing only long enough to hurl a twenty at the cabbie.

  “Oh my god! Ez! Look!” Lucy shouted, pointing over their heads at what remained of the apartment building’s upper story. It looked like someone had catapulted a boulder through Gwenda’s living room window.

  As they entered the lobby, a man outfitted in a navy blazer stepped out from behind a desk to block their way. He frowned as he held up his hands.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” the doorman said, addressing himself to Lucy. “But I have explicit orders from Ms. Latrobe not to allow you entrance to this building. I’m afraid you and your companion will have to leave.”

  “We don’t have time for this bullshit,” Ezrael announced flatly, pressing his forefinger firmly between the doorman’s brows. The other man’s jaw went slack and his eyes rolled back in their sockets, but he did not collapse. “Come on, we’ve got to hurry—he’ll snap out of it in ninety seconds! No time for the elevator—we better take the stairs!”

  For someone who was close to a thousand years old and hadn’t gotten much sleep lately, Ezrael seemed in pretty good shape. The Muse zipped past Lucy as she gasped for breath on the final landing.

  “Which apartment is it?”

  “Apartment D!” she managed between wheezes.

  Ezrael didn’t even bother knocking. The Muse eyed the door, backed up and slammed his shoulder against it. The door shook, but the locks held. On his third charge the door flew open with a loud smash. Lucy glanced up and saw an old man in bathrobe and slippers standing outside the apartment opposite Gwenda’s, scowling at her over his bifocals. When he realized she was looking at him, the neighbor quickly retreated, locking the door behind him.

  The apartment was in shambles: furniture lay overturned, pictures were knocked from the walls, and the floor was littered with smashed knickknacks. A near-naked Gwenda lay sprawled on the floor in a pool of spilled wine.

  Joth was standing in front of the shattered window, holding a feebly struggling Nevin aloft by the throat as easily as it would a doll. The dark angel’s toes had fused together and re-divided themselves, so that its foot resembled that of an ostrich. Its wings glittered as black as a scarab, and small horns—like those of a young goat—grew out of its forehead.

  “Joth!” Lucy screamed. “No!”

  The dark angel turned, allowing Nevin to drop to the floor. The artist lay there gasping like a landed fish, his face almost purple and his throat badly bruised.

  “That psycho tried to kill me!” Nevin wheezed, pointing a trembling finger at the transmuted angel.

  “You made her cry,” Joth replied matter-of-factly. “I told you I would do something I have never done before if you made her cry.”

  “H-he’s fucking crazy!” Nevin sputtered.

  “He’s a lot more than that,” Lucy whispered under her breath. “Ez— check to see if Gwenda’s okay,” she said, motioning to where her rival lay sprawled on the floor.

  “She’s alive—but it looks like her nose is broken,” Ezrael reported. As the Muse rolled Gwenda onto her back, she groaned and opened eyes that were already beginning to swell and purple.

  As Lucy moved aside to help Ezrael, Joth once more reached for Nevin. Lucy quickly jumped back in between her ex-boyfriend and the half-angel.

  “Stop it—please! Joth, don’t hurt him anymore!”

  Joth frowned, tilting its head. “You do not want me to destroy the deathling called Nevin—? Why?”

  “Because I’m afraid of what will happen.”

  “You are afraid for the deathling called Nevin?”

  Lucy shook her head. “I’m afraid for you! If you destroy Nevin, you’ll damn yourself forever. And if you do that, that will make me cry, too. But you’ll be the one who makes me cry then, Joth—not Nevin.”

  The dark angel stared down at her for a long moment, then closed its eyes. The horns sprouting from its head retracted themselves, like those of a snail. “Don’t cry, Lucy,” the angel pleaded. “I never want you to cry, Lucy. Never”

  Lucy blushed and flashed a smile as shy as a schoolgirl’
s. “That’s sweet of you, Joth—but crying is part of being human. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t cry now and again.”

  “Yes, it is a vale of tears you mortals dwell within, is it not?” Meresin said snidely as he picked his way through the splintered ruins of the front door. “Tears are part of the woof and weave of human existence—as is sorrow, pain, loneliness and abject misery. All these things would be yours as well, friend elohim. I ask you—is it worth it? Are you willing to surrender the uniformity of the Clockwork, the constancy of the Machine, to partake of the unleavened bread of mortality?”

  “What are you doing here?” snapped Lucy.

  “Just stopping by to speak with my newest client regarding a point of business, my dear, that’s all! It seems I forgot to get him to sign a couple of documents earlier,” the sephirah smiled slyly, patting his breast pocket. “I’m a stickler for paperwork.”

  “You’ve done enough damage as it is, daemon,” Ezrael replied. “Joth doesn’t need you tickling its ear with your serpent’s tongue.”

  “The sojourner will be mine, whether it falls or fails,” Meresin said with a shrug. “Indeed, it seems to be already more Infernal than Celestial by the looks of it. I simply do not see how encouraging this poor creature to pass itself through the eye of the needle is worth all this fuss! It’s plain to see that the elohim’s fate is sealed.”

  “Hold on—what’s going on here?” rasped Nevin as he massaged his throat. “You know these assholes, Meresin?”

  “Ah—Nevin!” the daemon smiled, patting him on the shoulder. “I am pleased to see you still amongst the living, although it would have been worth sacrificing a pawn such as yourself in order to capture a knight.”

  “Is everybody around here a friggin’ nutcase? What are you babbling about?” Nevin scowled.

  “Do not bother your lonely brain cell about it, you talentless cat’s paw!” Meresin snapped..

  “Hey—!” Nevin replied angrily. “You’re supposed to be my agent! Where do you get off calling me talentless—?”

  “Do as I say—!” snarled Meresin, allowing his mask of humanity to drop long enough to flash the artist a glimpse of the true face underneath. “Go tend to your tedious yoke-mate and stay out of this! Come the dawn, neither of you will have any clue as to what happened here—save for the window, of course.” Nevin turned the color of oatmeal and scuttled over across the room to help the dazed Gwenda sit up. Meresin sighed and turned back to Lucy and Ezrael. “Now where were we—? Ah, yes! As for yourselves, I recommend that you take this time to take the sojourner and go, before the police arrive.”

  “Meresin’s right,” Ezrael said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Lucy turned to look at the angel. “Joth—please come home.”

  Joth glanced over at Nevin, who was kneeling beside Gwenda. The artist cringed and tried to position his fiancée between himself and the angel.

  “I am ready to go home,” Joth replied.

  Meresin waved a final farewell as the trio fled the apartment, before turning to glare dispassionately at Nevin and Gwenda.

  “What the fuck was all that about?!?” Nevin spat, regaining some of his bravado now that the others were gone. “And what’s with you taking up for that bitch and her wacko friends, telling them to beat it before the cops show up? That fuckin’ lunatic jumped through the window and tried to kill me!”

  “Actually, it was trying to destroy you,” Meresin corrected. “Daemons do not kill or murder—that is purely a mortal sport. We destroy. Granted, it may seem a matter of semantics to the person involved. However, you should be more generous in regard to Ms. Bender. You owe her your life--what there is of it.”

  Meresin frowned, studying Gwenda as one would a particularly distasteful bug. “Frankly, I do not see why you chose to discard her for such a creature as this. And to think your kind possess free will! Astounding. Usually I have to go out of my way to ensure such disastrous pairings, but you seem to have taken the bull by the horns! Ah, dear, deluded Nevin—that all of us should be so lucky as to have someone willing to save us from ourselves!”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nisroc’s mane burned bright blue as it fixed its lambent gaze on the sojourner that stood before it. “Joth of the Lesser Elohim, I put to you the Question one final time: shall you return to the Clockwork, or shall you remain on this mortal plane? Which shall it be?”

  The angel shifted uneasily, casting Lucy a beseeching look. Despite herself, she mouthed the word: ‘stay.’ Joth nodded and returned its gaze to the seraph.”I shall remain here.”

  There was a sadness in the greater angel’s eyes as it folded its brass-shod talons across its breast. “So be it.”

  Joth instantly burst into flame. The elohim screamed as its divinity was stripped away like a layer of old paint, revealing the gleaming skin of a lizard underneath. The burning angel clutched its forehead as wildly corkscrewing horns burst through its temples and its blond tresses crackled like cellophane held over a gas burner, becoming a hideous fright wig. The black feathers that covered its wings fell away, exposing the leathery vanes of a dragon’s pinions. From between Joth’s thighs unrolled a segmented coil of flesh that resembled a scorpion’s tail, complete with stinger housed in the urethra. Its fused toes curled in on themselves and calcified, transforming themselves into hooves.

  Lucy turned to Ezrael, who was watching Joth’s transformation with open grief. “Why is this happening? He said he wanted to stay!”

  The Muse turned on her, his tone cruelly accusatory. “Because the decision wasn’t made of Joth’s free will! You made it for him! This is your fault, Lucy! You did this to him!”

  The creature that had once been Joth bellowed like a bull and grabbed the Muse by the throat. As Lucy watched, frozen in terror, the newborn daemon opened wide its jaws and bit off Ezrael’s head as easily as it would that of a chocolate Easter bunny.

  “NO!” she screamed. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen!”

  “Wake up, Lucy! You’re having a bad dream!”

  Lucy jumped as if she’d been given an electric shock. Her heart was thumping like she had just charged up a flight of stairs. It took her a second to recognize her surroundings as that of her own living room.

  “Thanks for shaking me out of that,” she groaned as she sat up. “That one was a real lulu of a nightmare!”

  “Here, I made you some java,” Ezrael said, offering her a steaming mug of fresh coffee.

  “Thanks—I need it,” she sighed, sipping at the bitter brew. “Where’s Joth?”

  “Right where you left it,” Ezrael replied.

  The angel as crouched on the floor of the living room, busily assembling a ten-thousand-piece puzzle of the Mona Lisa. By her count, this had to be the third time it had assembled that one particular jigsaw in the last five hours.

  Upon arriving back at her apartment, Ezrael and Lucy had been desperate to find some way to keep Joth preoccupied. Then Lucy had a brainstorm and dragged her mother’s jigsaw puzzle collection out of the hall closet and dumped them on the floor. Joth immediately fell to its hands and knees and began sorting the thousands upon thousands of individual pieces.

  “That was a great idea—whatever made you think of it?” Ezrael had asked, impressed by her ingenuity.

  “It was Joth who gave me the idea, really,” she replied with a shrug. “I had a chance to see how he perceives the world—like a gigantic puzzle that is constantly being put together and torn apart. So I figured it was worth a chance.”

  Now she sat on the couch, still groggy from her doze, and sipped hot coffee while watching Joth turn from the Mona Lisa and begin putting together a five-thousand-piece puzzle depicting Michelangelo’s The Creation of Man. The angel’s nimble hands sorted through the pile of pieces rapidly, without fumbling or pause. It did not look up from its task nor say anything as it worked. It had already assembled a two-thousand-piece New England landscape, a three-thousand-piece red covered bridge, a ten-thousand-
piece Monet painting of water lilies, and a five-thousand-piece black-and-white Escher staircase.

  Lucy sighed and glanced at her watch. “We’re going to need a lot more coffee before this is through. I’m going to make a quick trip to the store, if it’s okay with you, Ez.”

  “Sure,” the muse replied. “I think I can handle things until you get back.”

  After changing into a fresh pair of jeans and T-shirt, Lucy headed for the supermarket on Avenue A. It was early and the East Village’s more disreputable denizens were finally staggering home, glowering at the morning sun like vampires being chased back into their sepulchers.

  The store was less crowded than she’d ever seen it; then again, she rarely did her shopping before three in the afternoon. As she pushed her cart through the narrow aisles in search of coffee, raw sugar, bagels and toilet paper, she collided solidly with the cart of another early bird shopper. She backed up without looking, automatically mumbling an apology.

  “Good morning, Ms. Bender. I see you’re looking well this morning,” smiled Meresin.

  “You bastard!” Lucy blurted loudly enough to make the butcher stocking the meat case look in her direction. “What do you want? Are you following me?”

  “Heaven forbid!” Meresin said, feigning dismay. “I am merely tending to my shopping—much as you are.” To illustrate his point, the daemon picked up a can of baby octopus and tossed it in his otherwise empty cart.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it!’ she replied hotly. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish harassing me—”

  Meresin held up a hand. “Please, my dear! You wound me to the quick! But speaking of motivations—have you truly given any thought to your own incentives regarding this matter? Ask yourself, Lucy—is what you feel for Joth anchored in reality? After all, you thought what you had with Nevin was built on a solid foundation, am I right? Will you still feel the same for Joth once it sheds its wings? And what if Joth turns out to be a she, not a ‘he,’ as you insist on calling it?”