All the Blue-Eyed Angels

by Jen Blood

  He goes to the back of the barn. When he returns, he carries a metal container of gasoline.

  “You can’t—” she says. She feels the first vestiges of reality seeping in. Her son lies dead. And now…

  “I have no choice,” he tells her. “This is what’s required. We sacrifice the flock to resurrect the Lamb of God.” He smiles at her again. There is something insincere about the smile; for a moment, she feels as though he is laughing at her.

  Sacrifice the flock to resurrect the Lamb of God.

  She stands outside in the rain while the angel completes his mission. The congregation is still singing upstairs. Someone is speaking. The Angel of Death returns to her side. He holds up a lighter.

  “I’ll go. You stay here. Wait for your son to return to you. Hide from the world until he does.” He moves closer and presses a kiss to her cheek. He smells like blood and gasoline and the fury of a vengeful God. “Tell Adam that Father is watching,” he whispers.

  He curls his body around the lighter, shielding it from the wind and rain until a flame appears. It takes three attempts before the gasoline catches and the fire starts. Someone screams inside the chapel. Children cry. When Rebecca looks around again, the Angel of Death has vanished.

  She returns to the greenhouse to wait for Zion.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  We found Rebecca Ashmont in my father’s cabin, where I suspected she’d been staying since my father left the island. She lay on my father’s bed with her hands crossed over her stomach and her eyes closed. Her once-dark hair had gone silver and there were obviously more wrinkles than there’d been in the photos I’d seen, but she was still a striking woman.

  Jack checked her pulse, though the ligature marks around her neck made it clear what he’d find. I thought of the man I’d just chased through the forest; the man I was now positive had attacked me that morning at the old Payson house.

  Rebecca and Joe Ashmont; Noel Hammond; Matt Perkins—all dead now. Ashmont had said Rebecca had seen an Angel of Death—that that Angel was the one who burned the Payson Church to the ground. There was nothing supernatural about this man, though; I’d looked in his eyes twice now, and he was nothing if not flesh and blood.

  I touched Jack’s arm and motioned him outside. We watched the sun rise over the ocean and waited in silence for Diggs to arrive with the police.

  It was late afternoon the next day before I got back to Diggs’ house. I’d been given a clean bill of health at Kat’s old clinic, then sat through several hours of questioning with Sheriff Finnegan and a multitude of much less friendly faces from the state police, while we tried to sort through everything that had happened. Without much luck, as it turned out.

  Diggs’ Jeep was gone when I pulled in, but Jack’s Honda Civic was parked out front. The hatchback was open and a couple of boxes were already packed inside. Einstein bolted past Juarez when he opened the front door, and we had a brief but heartfelt reunion before Stein took off to christen a few bushes in my honor. Juarez approached.

  He’d showered and shaved and presumably gotten a couple of hours’ sleep. All things considered, he looked a hell of a lot better than I’d expected. Still exhausted, still haunted, but there was a resilience about him that pleased me. It would take a lot more than a few dead bodies and an amnesic childhood to keep Jack Juarez down for long.

  He set down the box he’d been carrying. “Police all done with you?”

  “For now. They didn’t learn much—since I don’t really know anything.”

  “You know who killed them; that’s something.”

  “I saw who killed them—but I don’t have a clue who he is, or what he has to do with any of this. My father’s alive, but I don’t know how to find him. More people died because of this thing—whatever it is—and I don’t know why.” I couldn’t keep the frustration from my voice, try as I might. “I’d say that’s not much of anything, actually.”

  “It’s more than I have,” he said quietly. I looked at him and saw the same frustration I was feeling, though considerably magnified. At least I knew where I came from; at least I had a place to start.

  He touched a scratch on my cheek. “Aside from that, you survived relatively unscathed this time, right?”

  “Nothing that time and a little concealer won’t heal. What about you?” I looked him in the eye. He wavered for just a second before the weakness passed and he smiled. It wasn’t so much an attempt to hide the pain as a refusal to give in to it. I liked that.

  He shrugged. “I’m fine. Scratches, scrapes, a bruise or two…”

  So, we weren’t talking emotional scars today. Fine with me. He moved in a little closer and ran his hand through my hair. I backed up until I hit the Honda Civic. Jack followed me.

  “So, you’re leaving?” I asked.

  “I’ve gotta get back—I’m starting to forget what I’ve got waiting for me.”

  “Which is?”

  He took a little while to think on that. “A job I love. Good friends. A bed that’s been empty too long.” He looked at me meaningfully. “What about you? Are you sticking around Littlehope, or can I tempt you out to D.C. now and then?”

  The afternoon was quiet and his body was warm and, honestly, what the hell else was I going to do? I swallowed hard and looked deep into his dark, dark eyes.

  “I don’t really know what I’m doing. But maybe a trip to D.C. could be arranged.” I hesitated. “It might be nice to spend a little time without quite so many distractions.”

  “If those were distractions, I’d hate to see what qualifies as a real disruption in your life.”

  I laughed. “Not just the death and mayhem. The whole thing with Diggs…”

  There was barely room to breathe between us, but he moved closer. “I told you before,” he said. “I’m not worried about Diggs.” He leaned in and kissed me. I kissed him back, pressed against the car in the bright sunshine. The world was disappointingly lacking in electricity when he stepped away from me.

  “I like you, Erin,” he said. “I think you’re tough and smart and sexy as hell. If Diggs is too scared of what people might think to admit he’s been in love with you since you were sixteen, that’s his loss.” He grinned like he knew full well the kind of bomb he’d just dropped, and didn’t really care. “I’m a good guy—but I’m not so good that I’ll just take a step back ‘til he comes to his senses.”

  The world got very, very quiet after that. Crickets, and so on.

  “Diggs isn’t…” I started.

  He gave me a look that implied arguing the point would be useless. I couldn’t explain the thing with Diggs to myself, let alone anyone else. Why bother even trying?

  “So, you really want me to come out to D.C. sometime?” I asked instead.

  “Name the weekend and I’ll show you the city.” He got close again. Leaned in and kissed my neck. “Among other things.”

  We may have broken a few of your tamer public decency laws before we both came up for air. He had a flight to catch. I had thousands more questions that needed answering and a whole lot of sleep to catch up on. We kissed one more time, he promised to give me a call once he was back in D.C., and I watched him drive away.

  I went back inside when he was gone, took a cold shower, and crawled into bed with Einstein.

  I didn’t get up again for twenty-four hours.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  While I slept, I dreamed of the Angel of Death—the mysterious hooded man who chased me across Payson Isle twenty-two years ago, and who now took up almost as much space in my head as my missing father. He was chasing me again in the dream—so close behind that I could feel his fingernails at the back of my neck when he reached for me. I woke in a tangle of sweaty sheets, my head filled with unanswered questions.

  Who the hell was he? And what did Kat know about any of it? What the hell kind of secret did my father have in his past that a creepy lunatic in a cloak would come to town after all this time and murder anyone who might reveal whate
ver he was hiding? And if that was the case, then why hadn’t he killed me when he had the chance? I went in the bathroom and brushed my teeth, still going over everything in my head. I’d solved one mystery: who set the Payson fire. But how many others did I stir up by answering that single question?

  I went to see Kat in the hospital that afternoon. Juarez was back in D.C. I’d managed a couple of sleepy exchanges with Diggs, and been called in for more questioning with another half-dozen agencies now looking into the Payson fire and the most recent deaths on Payson Isle. So far, Maya had been adamant that no one be allowed to question Kat until she was on her feet again, but I personally didn’t think that would make any difference.

  My mother wasn’t talking.

  I went to see her anyway, just in case.

  When I got there, she was sitting up in bed trying to type on her laptop with only one hand. Her face was less swollen but no less alarming, and judging by the look in her eye she’d cut off the painkillers about a week too soon.

  “You heard what happened?” I asked.

  She looked up. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She pushed the wheely cart holding her laptop aside and nodded me closer. “Sit.”

  I sat on the side of the bed.

  She poked at my cheek and made a face. “Blackberry brambles?”

  “I think so, yeah. It was dark—hard to tell.”

  “You’re limping.”

  “I sprained my ankle. I’m okay, Kat.”

  I got off the bed and pulled up a chair instead. I looked her in the eye. She didn’t look away, which I took as a good sign.

  “Dad’s still alive.”

  “We buried your father,” she said.

  “I don’t know who you buried, but it wasn’t Dad. Joe Ashmont told me you’re the only thing standing between me and a bullet,” I said. “Why would he say something like that?”

  “Joe Ashmont was a fool and a drunk to boot. How the hell should I know why he said anything?” I noticed that she’d stopped looking at me, though.

  Clearly, this was getting us nowhere. I took a deep breath in a vain attempt not to throttle her in her hospital bed.

  “Okay, let’s try something else. I’ll tell you what I know. Maybe you’ll have something you can add.”

  She didn’t look enthusiastic, but she didn’t stop me, either.

  “Isaac Payson helped Rebecca Ashmont and her son escape from Joe, because he was beating the tar out of them. But then Rebecca got out to the island and started sleeping with Isaac, which Dad didn’t like. And Isaac started paying a little too much attention to Zion, who may or may not have been off his rocker himself.”

  She smiled faintly at that.

  “So, Dad went to Reverend Diggins to get some advice on what he should do. And of course Daddy Diggs decided the best course of action was going out there and staging an intervention. They recruited Joe to help—I’m guessing because Rebecca said she wouldn’t go no matter what, and she was threatening Dad with whatever secret she knew about him. So, he needed her off that island.”

  I looked at Kat to see if she would argue any of this. She waited for me to continue, sitting there like a very battered Queen of Sheba.

  “So, Matt decided he would have a go at getting her off the island before anybody else went out there—maybe to play white knight, or maybe there were other motives at work. I don’t know. But things went wrong. Isaac showed up. Things got confusing. Matt’s gun went off, and he took out Isaac and Zion in one fell swoop.”

  She lowered her eyes. So, she hadn’t known that part, at least.

  “Where I get lost is after all that went down,” I said. Frustration was starting to bleed into my voice. I tamped it down; losing control would never get Kat to see things my way. “Because after the shooting, Dad got a call from Joe telling him they weren’t going after Rebecca. That he should just forget it. So, Dad called Reverend Diggins, and then…?”

  I looked at her. She stared at her hands for a long time before she finally met my eye.

  “He came to see me,” she said.

  Things got quiet. “You said you didn’t see him that morning. That if you’d known he wasn’t coming back for me, you would have gotten me yourself.”

  “I lied,” she said simply, and I knew that for once she was telling the truth. “He came to me to ask what he should do. He was in trouble—he knew that. Rebecca saw to it. So, I told him to leave.”

  “Leave where?”

  “Payson Isle. Littlehope. Maine. The U.S., if he could. I was on my way to get you when Diggins called to tell me Joe was there, drunker than a skunk and talking crazy. And he was: beaten to hell, crying, covered in blood, babbling about something I didn’t understand.” I could imagine Ashmont seeking refuge at the bottom of a bottle after his son had been killed, maybe getting the snot kicked out of himself somewhere along the way. “He said Matt was still out on the island,” Kat continued, “and he needed to get back out there. I dosed him with sleeping pills and he passed out.”

  “And when he woke up, you found out the island was burning,” I guessed.

  “Your father came back—I don’t know how he heard. He went and got you.” She rolled her eyes. “Took you out to that fucking island where dozens of people were already dead, because he was afraid to leave you alone once he knew what happened.”

  I held my breath. “And what happened, Kat?” I finally managed.

  She wet her lips. Looked me square in the eye. “There was a fire,” she said. “People died. That’s all you need to know.”

  “The hooded man—the one you always said was a figment of my imagination? I saw him again. He was the one who attacked you out on the island, wasn’t he? You and Joe and Matt—what the hell were you up to? Did he come for you, or did you go looking for him?”

  “There was a fire,” she repeated. Her eyes had gone cold, but there was still a tell-tale spark of fear lingering there. “I’m telling you: that’s all you need to know, Erin. Stop looking.”

  Maya came in before I could get the water boarding under way.

  “You two are still playing nice, I see,” she said. She wore jeans and a pretty green sweater and she looked more chipper than my mother on her best day. Kat smiled at her—actually smiled. I’d forgotten she could even do that.

  “Just catching up, but Erin has to be going.”

  “Did you tell her our news?” Maya asked. She sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand resting absently on my mother’s knee.

  “What news?” I asked. If there was suspicion in my voice, I felt it was entirely justified.

  I sat with my hands folded in my lap while Maya gave me the skinny on my mother’s future plans. They would stay in Littlehope—just for a while, Kat assured me. Take over the clinic while she recuperated. Take things slow. I tried to read my mother in all of this; the woman who had despised Littlehope almost more than I had when I was growing up. She might have been bruised and swollen and just back from the brink of death days before, but she looked surprisingly pleased with the decision.

  Maya gave me a hug before I left, while Kat just told me to put ointment on my scratches and get a damned haircut already. I got back in the car and drove Einstein to the local dog shop, where I sat and watched him wrestle with a shepherd named Chuck while I checked out premium dog foods and thought about the bizarre bastardizations of love that manifest between parents and children, and all the ways they’ll bite you in the ass in the end.

  Then, I bought six tins of Loyal Biscuit premium dog biscuits, packed my mutt back in the car, and buckled him into his brand new doggie seatbelt.

  I went to find Diggs.

  Einstein trotted happily beside me once more when we returned to the Trib. The sun was out, the sky was clear. Diggs smiled when I came into the newsroom, nodding toward his office before any of the roving reporters could question me about the alarming number of people who seemed to meet a terrible end shortly after they crossed my path.
Diggs sat in his chair; I sat on the corner of his desk.

  “You got some sleep,” he said.

  “Lots of sleep.”

  “Come up with any answers to the mysteries of Payson Isle?”

  “Other than the basics? Not really. I need to know who the Angel of Death is, though.”

  Diggs looked uncomfortable at that. The day before, I’d finally given him an abbreviated version of my story about the hooded man who had chased me the day of the Payson fire, and the role I suspected he’d played that day and over the past week. I hadn’t been able to tell at the time whether Diggs was skeptical of my tale or just plain terrified.

  “What? You think I’m still making him up?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I think three people were murdered out on Payson Isle yesterday, and you and Kat almost joined that list. I think your father’s hiding out for a reason you might not be ready to know, and this nut job in the hood isn’t just gonna drop everything. Not if you keep pushing.”

  I had actually considered all of that. Someone saner might have just let the whole thing go, but I knew I couldn’t. Diggs read that without me having to come out and say it and moved on to the next topic.

  “And you still don’t have a clue where your father might be.”

  “Washington, I guess—I mean, that’s where the phone rang, anyway. I’m booked on a flight tomorrow.”

  He didn’t look happy about that, but he didn’t look that surprised, either.

  “Did you know Kat and Maya are moving back here?” I asked.

  Based on his reaction—or lack of one—I was guessing he did. “What about you? Are you sticking around the old hometown for a while?” he asked. “After the Washington trip, I mean?”

  “Maya asked if I wanted to take care of their place in Portland. I think I’ll do that, actually.”

  There was a flicker of what might have been disappointment before he nodded. “Good—it’ll give you a chance to establish yourself, get back on your feet. Maybe go a few months without a life-or-death struggle for truth and justice.”