by Amy Vansant
A minute later, a flash caught his eye and he looked down to find a red pinpoint of light dancing on his sweatshirt. He heard the shot and felt the force of the bullet strike his heart. He flinched, but didn’t fall. Another bullet struck him an inch from the first, exiting clean through his back.
Maybe I should fall down. This could go on all day.
He took a wheezy breath; his lung pierced, and then healed himself with a blaze of red light.
“I assume the next will be through the head,” he called out to the mystery shooter. “Please don’t.”
“Why are you up here wearing a vest?” returned a gruff male voice.
“A vest?”
“A bulletproof vest!”
“I’m not. Though that sounds like a great idea about now.”
“If you aren’t wearing a vest you’re dead.”
“Nope. I’ve been dead before and this isn’t it.”
A head of white hair flashed into view and then disappeared behind a tree.
“What do you want?”
Rathe took a step forward.
“I want to offer you a job.”
“Stay where you are. I don’t need a job.”
“So you’re happy living on a cliff above a highway eating rabbit every day?”
“As a clam. It beats prison, Iraq, South American jungles and my ex-girlfriend’s house.”
“Hm. The girlfriend you killed?”
The man was slow to respond.
“Who are you?”
Rathe sat down on the pine needles and crossed his legs in front of him.
“Do we really have to keep screaming back and forth? Can you come out and search me for weapons or something?”
The man stepped out from behind the tree. His face wore miles; deep craggy lines radiating from his eyes betrayed too much time spent in sunny climes. A shock of gray hair stood an inch around his head, a buzz-cut grown into a jagged halo. A week’s worth of grizzled salt and pepper hair covered his chin. He wore a black, long sleeved t-shirt, a black vest with more pockets than Rathe cared to count, brown pants with even more pockets and tan boots. He wasn’t a large man, but he was wiry and without an ounce of fat on his body. He looked like the human personification of a steel cable.
He glowed bright green.
Damn. Here’s a conundrum.
“I need someone killed,” said Rathe, twirling a pine needle between his fingers as he tried to ignore the stench radiating from the old soldier. He noticed some pine sap on the tree beside him and took a little, dabbing it beneath his nose.
“Really? And you want me? Seems I’ve lost my touch.”
“No, you’re an excellent shot. You just need background on the strengths and weaknesses of your targets.”
“Targets? You said someone. Now it’s people?”
“I thought we’d start with someone and work our way to people. What’s your name?”
The man paused and chewed on his lip while he considered his answer.
“Mallory. And I’m too old to kill anyone any other way but with a rifle. You should know that up front.”
The Cherub stood and brushed off his pants.
“I’m Rathe.”
He held out his hand and Mallory stared at it a moment before returning his gaze to Rathe’s eyes.
The Cherub abandoned his attempt at pleasantries and dropped his hand to his side. “So…Mallory…what if I told you I could make you young again?”
“You came all the way out here to sell me cold cream?”
“Let me rephrase that. I can’t make you young again, but I can make you feel young again. You’ll look the same, but you’ll move like a twenty-year-old. Actually, you’ll move like a twenty-year-old superhero.”
The man offered a mirthless grin and spat.
“I’m starting to think I’d like to try shooting you again. I’ve got knee pain that would kill a lesser man. The discs in my back are shot. I’ve nearly lost sight in one eye. I’m riddled with arthritis and cancer, which will kill me in a month or two. I’m a fifty-year-old man with the body of an eighty-year-old. There’s nothing you or any doctor can do for me. I’ve lived my life.”
“Then what do you have to lose?”
“Even if I bounced out of here healthy as a buck, I’ve got warrants out for my arrest in every state and half the countries.”
“I promise that won’t be a problem.”
There was a long pause while Mallory stared at Rathe, the ground, the trees and the sky, his breathing slow and steady. He shifted his weight, winced, and repositioned again.
“Are you thinking or did you forget where you are?” asked Rathe.
“Are you the devil?”
He laughed. “No. But you aren’t the first to ask. I think I’m more of an angel, as you understand them, but I’m an angry angel.”
Mallory spat. “Well, we’ve got something in common then. The angry part. Not the angel.”
“So you’re amenable?”
“What do I have to do?”
Rathe took a step forward, holding his breath to keep the soldier’s evil stench at bay. He glowed much greener than the man whose car he’d taken, even greener than Tyannah’s brother. His instincts demanded Mallory’s death, but his mind insited a soldier would be useful against the Angeli. He already knew he was a terrible fighter. He needed a true soldier to help him train the girl and complete his mission.
“Just stand there and I’ll do the rest.”
He extended his wings, glowing oblong webbing spanning from either side of his body. Mallory didn’t flinch.
“You don’t seem impressed. The wings don’t surprise you?”
Mallory looked at him with cold, dead eyes and shrugged.
“I’ve seen stranger.”
Rathe found Tyannah parked on the edge of a farm several miles from Mallory’s camp. He dropped Mallory’s limp form from his shoulder, opened the back door and stuffed the body into the back seat.
“At least lay him out,” said Tyannah. “You can’t leave him all folded up like that. How can he breathe balled up like an armadillo?”
Rathe huffed and did his best to straighten the old man’s body. He was annoyed. He wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing, turning such an evil man into a Sentinel. Also, he had no idea what an armadillo was.
Tyannah surveyed his progress.
“Is he dead?” she asked as Rathe sat in the passenger seat and shut the door.
“No. I mean, no more than you were for a while. He’s changing.”
She sighed and glanced back at the old man.
“Do I get seniority?”
“He’s older and more experienced for this kind of work. I’d take his advice if I were you. But don’t kid yourself; no one has any power around here except me.”
She turned her gaze back to the road.
“Where to next?”
Rathe closed his eyes and within the blackness, a glowing network of threads came into focus, each fiber connected to a point of light. He felt a pull in one direction.
“Drive west.”
Chapter Twelve
Eris sat in the passenger seat of the Sentra breathing heavily. The joy of draining the human sitting beside her made her giddy, and the extra power absorbed flashed through her body like a self-contained lightning storm. Her victim, once plump with rosy cheeks and a bob of dark hair, now appeared deflated and mummy-like, her skin clinging to her brittle bones like turkey jerky.
Underground parking garages made excellent places to hunt. No one glanced into the cars; they were too intent on finding their own spot or too frustrated as they circled through the screw threads of the structure searching for their parked vehicle. As long as Eris didn’t allow her victim to slip the key in the ignition, she had no problem. On her first try, she had waited too long, skulking the back seat. The woman put the key in the ignition and the next thing Eris knew a line of cars had piled behind the woman’s car, waiting for her to leave her precious spot, drawn like
moths to the lights. Eris had to abort her mission and phase through the bottom of the car into the back seat of a another vehicle on the level below. She’d learned.
Satiated, Eris lingered in the car, unsure where she should go. Her time between feedings grew shorter, the demands of the Perfidia amplifying. It wouldn’t be long before she’d need to kill one person a day; a number impossible to hide without roaming the country and disseminating the carnage. As her thoughts became more scattered, the idea of roaming became more odious. She wanted to sit in a room and have people bring her victims. She smiled, at the thought. If only it were the middle ages again. Things would be so much easier. People today had no time for cults. Their phones were their gods.
Eris shivered, her nerves jumping. Life had seemed so promising when she met with Seth and Meili to discuss the concept of Angeli freedom. The idea of freeing themselves from human servitude, starting a new life, free from responsibilities, had been so beautiful, so simple and pure. Then Meili had traveled to investigate Michael’s progress against their cause, and the next thing she knew, Meili was dead, killed by Seth himself. Seth had seemed odd during their last meeting, babbling and crazy, but Meili had assured her they would avoid Seth’s fate. He had everything figured out.
Everything except Seth.
Now she was confused. Would Seth hunt her as well? Did he even remember her, or was his tenuous grasp of reality slipping with every sunset? Seth had traveled to the other side and returned with a glorious new philosophy and a plan to free them all. She’d been ready to follow him anywhere.
Then he’d swallowed Meili whole.
Eris reached towards the body in the driver’s seat beside her and flicked at it with her nail. A tiny shower of dried skin and muscle rained into the woman’s lap. Meili would be disappointed in her. He’d told her not to drain humans to the point of death, but to drink her fill and then break their necks and hide the bodies. Bury them deep in areas people were not likely to dig. But, as the weight of Meili’s death weighed upon her, she was draining more and more humans and found it increasingly difficult to ascertain the moment of death. The need for their energy was unbearable. Even now, just moments after feeding, her thoughts turned to the next victim.
Eris flipped down the visor and peered into the mirror, studying the dark circles beneath her eyes. Her thinning hair fell limp on either side of her face. Her gaunt cheeks had lost their glow and her once-golden skin cast a dull green pallor. Perfidia was eating her alive. She knew it. Another Angelus would be able to spot her infection from across a room.
Michael had instituted new check-in rules and soon she’d be called upon for testing. As an Arch, she only had to check in once a year. If she were a guardian angel, she’d already be caught; recycled by a Sentinel or living on the lam. She was lucky, but her luck was running out.
Eris stepped out of the car and retrieved the large suitcase she’d hidden in front of it. She always tucked the suitcase between the car and the parking garage wall where a driver couldn’t see it without pulling out or walking around the car. Humans liked to put their groceries and gifts in their trunks and when they opened the trunk to find a strange suitcase, it complicated the situation. She’d found that out the hard way.
Eris put the suitcase in the mummy’s passenger seat and unzipped it. She grabbed the human husk by the shoulders and shoved it into the bag head first, the limbs snapping like dried reeds as she folded them to fit the space. She brushed off the driver’s seat, removing as much dust as possible. A human detective would never figure out what happened, but it was best to cover oddities. Discovering a kilo of human debris in a car might inspire one person to conclude the victim didn’t moisturize enough and another to investigate the existence of life-sucking angels. She could never count on humans to be particularly stupid or clever. They were all over the place.
Eris wondered how much longer she would remember to cover her tracks. It was already hard to concentrate. Soon, even the dumbest humans would find her suspicious.
Eris secured the suitcase and phased through the bottom of the car, several levels of the parking lot and twenty feet of dirt until she reached her death chamber. The ten-by-ten room held four other bodies. It had taken her eight hours to dig it. Miserable work. The idea of moving to another location and digging a new chamber filled her with dread, but abandoning this parking lot was necessary. If more victims disappeared from the same lot the police would notice a pattern. Soon, they would surveil the lot, and eventually, someone would notice her, no matter how careful she tried to be. She always moved the cars to other locations, but people talked. People told their loved ones, “I’m going to the food store,” and then they disappeared. Have that happen a dozen times and someone will spot the pattern.
Eris tried to be smart. She chose only women victims, so people would assume their disappearances were sexual in nature. They’d never find the bodies, buried deep beneath the parking garage, but her hunger grew and the panic caused by scores of women disappearing from one area would cause her trouble. She had to move.
Eris unzipped the luggage and shook the body out on top of her last meal. She left the suitcase there, phased upward into the woman’s car and drove twenty miles to another shopping center, where she parked and stepped out, leaving the keys in the ignition. No need to wipe down anything. Angeli didn’t have fingerprints.
She took a last peek in the window to be sure nothing suspicious remained inside.
A paper lay on the driver’s seat, smooth and unwrinkled as if someone had just placed it there.
Was I sitting on that?
She plucked out the paper. It was clean, white, and thicker than she’d imagined. The underside felt slick. She turned it over to find it was a photograph; a picture of herself, standing in the parking lot, watching her victim walk to her car, groceries in tow. In the far corner of the parking lot, another figure lurked, so blurry she wasn’t sure if it was a person or a man-shaped shadow. Eris ran her hand over the photograph to assure herself it had texture and boundaries. The more she stared at the blurred figure, the more it seemed to move, throbbing in rhythm with her hurried heartbeat. She worried the figure would leap from the page. Panicked, she crumpled the photo and stuffed it into her purse.
Eris walked through the outdoor shopping center; a glorified strip mall constructed in red brickwork. She peered through the windows of the high-end clothing stores. Shopping helped clear her head. She liked the way the associates scurried back and forth, waiting on her, the gorgeous woman with classical Greek features and expensive clothing. Her appearance had always demanded respect, but now, her deteriorating looks left her unattended. She wouldn’t even be able to window shop much longer. Already, the counter girls ignored or squinted at her. They knew something was wrong but couldn’t put their finger on it. She probably just looked tired to them. Maybe a little sick or hung over. For now.
Soon, she’d have to restrict her shopping and travel to nighttime. A year or two after that, even darkness would fail to hide her corrosion. Eventually, a Sentinel would find her. She would fight but she would lose. Only a handful of infected angels had defeated Sentinels. She would be the second Arch to fall to Perfidia, after Seth. Meili was probably infected as well, despite his proselytizing about avoiding the disease. Thanks to Seth, she’d never know.
Michael wouldn’t send a lone Sentinel against an Arch, not even his precious Anne. Maybe Michael would assist. It would be good to see him one last time. They’d been quite a pair during the 1500s, before Anne caught his eye.
She’d tried to get rid of Anne, using an intermediary to task Anne with Seth’s reaping at the end of the eighteenth century. Damned if the little tart didn’t win. Eris shook her head at the memory. She should have killed the Sentinel herself, but she didn’t have Perfidia then. She hadn’t been awakened to Seth’s ideas of mental freedom. The idea of killing a Sentinel had never occurred to her. The closest her jealousy had been able to get her was placing the girl in harm’s way.<
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Eris stopped and stared at her reflection in a shop window.
What if Michael does send Anne to kill me?
She groaned at the thought.
A child screamed and Eris snapped from her thoughts. At the end of the block, a boy stared down at a toppled ice cream, wailing. A car screeched to a halt, narrowly missing a man in a crosswalk. An alarm went off in a store.
Eris froze. Too much chaos. Too many coincidences.
A woman’s heel snapped off and her leg buckled as she caught herself on the shoulder of another passerby, pushing him into the wailing child. All three fell. A sudden breeze arose and a man lost his grip on his newspaper. The pages flew away, narrowly missing Eris.
The air went dead a moment later.
Her vision swam with blue light and her ears rang with alarm bells. Her mind grew fuzzier as her disease advanced, she knew that, but this was the worst symptom yet. She had to be imagining these things.
There! That man; he looked familiar. He walked past the gentleman who’d lost his newspaper, heading towards Eris, oblivious to the chaos around him. As he strolled by a woman with a dog, the dog lunged and snapped at another passerby.
“He never does that!” She heard the woman screech.
The man walked in slow motion, wearing a duster that flapped in the wind even though the air was as still as a crypt’s. The closer he came, the faster he moved, as the people around him slowed, moving as if they were under water.
The man stopped in front of Eris, his head tilted low. He raised his chin to meet her gaze. His eyes were black, color swirling in their depths.
Seth.
Eris’ breath caught in her throat. Had he come to devour her, the way he had taken Meili? Her eyes darted to the left and right, searching for a direction to run. There were people everywhere. She couldn’t fly away. Or could she? She didn’t have to worry what people thought anymore. Even if they had cell phones and video cameras. What did she care? Why should she protect the anonymity of the Angeli?
