Grim

by Thea Atkinson

  I almost slipped on the sandwich I had hurled at him earlier. My palm went to my stomach out of relief and instinct. That sandwich. I remembered making it. It was Sarah's favorite and I so wanted to help her. What kind of universe put a girl in a spot like this for wanting to be helpful?

  Something in me sagged. Whatever it was, it finally stole everything from my muscles. I fell to my knees in the aisle. The blazing debris from the gallery snapping in my ears. As my hand went down, I felt a piece of glass slice into my palm, but I didn't even have the energy to cry out. Instead, I hung over my hands and knees watching the firelight play in the broken pieces of stained glass. Resigned, I fell backward onto my haunches.

  Glass snapped beneath his step as he crept closer.

  "That's it," he said. "It won't hurt. You'll be good as new tomorrow."

  I braced myself for the feel of his fingers tangling in my hair. I might have even winced. But the pain in my scalp never came. Instead I heard him swear and in the next instant, he thudded onto his back just a foot away.

  I blinked against the hot tears blurring my vision at the sight of him on the floor in front of me. I winced again from reflex as I imagined all of those shards of glass digging into his bare skin. My gaze caught sight of a smear of bread and banana next to him, and I realized in that second he had slipped on the sandwich. I laughed. I mean really laughed.

  I should have run, but I didn't. Something rose in my chest to partner with the blind fear and I gave in to it.

  I wasn't sure what happened next, I only knew that the shard of glass that was still in my hand rose above my head and came down onto his throat. I felt something hot spray across me and for a second, I thought it was more of that oil he had thrown at me earlier.

  My mind was gone. There was only enough rational thought to tell me that I shouldn't be lifting my hand up one more time and bringing it down against his carotid. Whatever else might have made its way to my reason was lost as I swung for him again. I thought I heard him sobbing. It was only when I noticed he wasn't even breathing and the wailing sounds still echoed around the sanctuary that I realized it came from me.

  I dropped the glass and fell to my palms over him.

  Dead. He was dead and I was free. Giddiness drenched me. Remorse too. My stomach tried to heave itself up into my throat.

  I sucked in the sobs. Swallowed them with a shuddering breath. My chest shuddered with the effort of collecting myself.

  I pushed myself to my feet. The toe of my boot nudged his belly and I fought the rising bile. No use. I found myself quivering between the pews, retching up the spaghetti Gramp had made for supper.

  When I pulled myself straight, a man stood in front of me. I suppose under normal circumstances, I would have shrieked and startled.

  Circumstances were not normal.

  "Who the hell are you," I demanded in the calmest, most of-course-there's-another-psychopath kind of voice. The crackling of the fire around me seemed almost surreal.

  "You mean what," he said.

  I was certain that I should be freaking out right then. With the fire crackling around me and this tattooed man at my feet, I should be screaming like a banshee.

  Shock. So this is what it felt like. Numbness. I was aware I hadn't blinked, and I made a concerted effort to make my eyelids drop. He wavered for a second as my tear ducts tried to lubricate the movement.

  "What, then?" I said to him.

  "I am Azrael. The Angel of Death."

  I blew air out of my mouth. Sure. Why not. The night was already past rational. I looked askance at the man who still lay on the floor, but now he was looking distinctly grey. Dead, definitely. I hitched in several shuddering breaths.

  "You've come for him?"

  He gave me a queer look that made me feel as though someone had reached into my throat and throttled my voice box.

  "No," he murmured. "I came for you."

  CHAPTER 3

  I pushed myself to a stand, both hands gripping the back of the pew. I had no idea what was happening, but I wasn't going to let one more psychopath try to kill me.

  "You see what coming for me got that guy." I gestured to the dead body, then I pulled up my fists like Sarah had taught me. I might have swayed a bit, but my fists were good and tight. Bewilder them with bravado if nothing else.

  I was vaguely aware of the dizziness trying to overtake me, and that I was most definitely not steady on my feet. I knew I sounded weary and uncertain, and I was pretty sure that if he came at me, I wouldn't be able to do anything but glare at him. Even so, it was a matter of pride.

  A specter of a smile twitched Azrael's lips but he never quite gave in to it. I waited, breath held for him to make his move, but he sighed instead and eased himself out of the pew and back into the aisle. I watched him stroll over to the dead man, a thin cane tapping the tiles with each step. It had a pointed silver tip that he used to nudge the dead man as he stood over him. Some relation, I thought, because the old man almost seemed to recognize him, though they didn't look remotely the same. The man on the floor was thick muscled and young. Azrael had a decrepit look to him even if he showed all the wiriness of a young man.

  "He's dead," I said.

  He swiveled his gaze back to mine. One silver brow cocked playfully.

  "I see that," he said.

  I stole a look at the gallery above me. Still burning, but not quite so fierce now. The other fires crackled almost playfully. If I made a run for it, I might be able to get halfway to the door before he even knew my intent.

  "You won't get far," he said as though he had plucked the thought straight from my mind. Then his left hand shot into the air and his fingers snapped. Every single fire around me simply shut off as though by a valve.

  "Holy crap," I said. "This can't be real."

  I squeezed my eyes shut, putting every muscle of my face into the protest I would open them. And this would all be gone. The smell of guttered smoke, with all its musty undertones wafted my way.

  "I can assure you I'm real," he said and I peeked one eye open, then the other. Nothing had changed except he stood there, watching me.

  I felt rooted to the floor by that gaze. And when a glow rose in the sanctuary that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once, lighting every wrought iron sconce and chain, every wrinkled bit of plaster and fleck of aging gold paint, I had to lift a hand to shield my eyes.

  "Not that I don't recommend running," he said. "Just that it isn't wise. At least not yet."

  It was in that second that my calf muscle twitched and then spasmed. In the next second, a hot knife of pain burrowed through the tissues. I fell back onto the bench, gripping my calf with both hands.

  "Holy Hell," I gasped out. "What did you do to me?"

  By now the muscle in my calf wasn't just burning, it was twisting. I felt as though it was being torn apart and remolded. I couldn't do much more than hang over my knees and clutch the muscle, trying in vain to keep the pain in one place.

  "The first one hurts a lot," he said. "Not that they don't all hurt, but since you're not expecting it this time.."

  I glowered at him and said through clenched teeth, "The hell are you doing?"

  He shrugged his shoulders and I realized for the first time he was wearing an immaculately pressed suit. In stark contrast, the shoes on his feet were worn out Birkenstock sandals snuggled tightly around red wool socks.

  "I'm doing nothing to you," he said. "I promise you."

  "Then what's happening?" I could barely get the words out through the pain. I ended up sucking in a breath and holding it, rocking back and forth in the pew as I tried to wait out the agony.

  "You're being branded."

  Three simple words but staggering in their implication. Branded. My thoughts flew to all of the marks on the psychopath. I could almost hear the cogs of my brain squeak as they worked out a connection between what was happening to me and the maniac on the floor. I realized that his marks hadn't been tattoos at all. Not one
single one of them. I tried to consider how it would feel to have my eyelids branded like his had been, and something in me recoiled.

  I lifted my head to peer over at him past this new, silver-haired threat's spindly legs. I caught sight of the inert body between them, and I could swear he was shrinking in front of my eyes. Was that glitter streaming out from his nostrils?

  Like he had done with the psychopath, the man lifted his cane and pointed the tip of it at me.

  "You'll get one of those for each fare you reap."

  "Oh no," I said, gasping as another spasm worked his way through to the bone. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't want anything to do with it."

  Azrael made a small circle in the air with the tip of his cane. "I wish I could say you had a choice."

  "What are you talking about?" I ground out between clenched teeth. "What the hell is going on?"

  Even before he could answer, the sparkling smoke emitting from the psychopath's nostrils started to gather above him. It was as though his body was disintegrating from the inside out and its particles were streaming out his nose into the air above him.

  The dead man shrank as I watched and then he started to crumble to ash before it gathered into a plume of whirling dust. It funneled up into the glittery cloud and hung there suspended as though it were waiting for something.

  I felt a strange tingling running over my skin and realized that the man's blood was lifting from each place it had splashed onto and was disintegrating into that same sparkling smoke. I watched it sail through the air from me to the same cloud.

  "Holy Hannah," I murmured. This was too surreal. I had to be dreaming. I had to be, and yet the pain in my calf told me differently.

  The old man gave his cane tip a sharp rap against the stone floor. With his free hand, he popped the top of the cane free and upended it, letting it lie in his palm. He eyed it for a moment with a thoughtful look on his face. It was unnerving to realize the handle he held was shaped like one of those grieving angels over a gravestone. It felt macabre even in the wash of what was going on around me.

  With his other hand, he held open a leather pouch, dangling it from his fingertips so that the mouth of it was facing the cloud.

  The glitter above where the dead man had been clenched into a ball midair and then streaked toward the opening of the pouch like a flock of starlings pirouetting through the sky. As each grain settled into the leather bag, he shook it, as though to ensure that everything would fit. A soft sucking sound came from the pouch as the last of the grains disappeared into its belly.

  With a short grunt of satisfaction, he upended the pouch into the opening of his cane and then he popped the top back on and rested his hand atop it again, with his ring finger and pinky on one side of the wings and his thumb on the other, nestling his palm in the groove of the angel's back where the wings were spread. He peered at me over his cane with an expression of resignation.

  "I've lost my mind," I murmured.

  "Perhaps at one time," he said. Then he cocked that silver brow again as he pinned that penetrating gaze on me. "The pain is gone?"

  I swallowed, assessing how I felt, and nodded. It was both a relief and a terror to know that.

  "I thought so," he said and lifted the tip of his cane to point at me. A light streamed from it onto my leg and I couldn't help but pull my pant leg up to inspect the skin beneath.

  I prayed there'd be nothing there, but of course there was. I had no idea what the symbol represented but it had been burned deep into my tissues so black that it left an echo of my pain on the skin. To normal eyes, I supposed it would look like a tattoo. But I had felt its inking as though it had come from my very blood and bone marrow. I would never be able to look at it without remembering the agony.

  "You can run now," he said. "But I have a feeling you've changed your mind."

  I pushed my pants back down over the mark and shook my foot.

  "Damn straight I have," I said.

  He tossed his cane up into the air and caught it in the middle then swaggered over toward me. If I'd thought him decrepit, his saunter with confident and almost powerful steps made me rethink it. I backed up with every step he took forward.

  "Now, now," he said, a mother hen clucking at an errant chick. "I thought you weren't going to run."

  "This isn't running," I said. I just didn't want him anywhere near me. He could tell me what he wanted to, what I needed to know, but after what I'd just seen, I would keep a safe distance from him.

  "Semantics." He fluttered his fingers in the air. "So what is it you'd like to know?" he said.

  "Maybe you can start with telling me what the hell this is." I waggled my foot at him as though he could still see a mark on my leg when I knew my pants covered it over perfectly.

  "I thought I did," he said putting a finger to his chin. "Was I not clear?"

  "About as clear as a bucket of tar."

  He chuckled. "For every mystical being you reap, you get one of those. Just like he did. Until it covers every inch of your body."

  I felt sick at that. "Every inch?" I tried to think of all the tender areas of my body that I would rather not have poked with a needle let alone the burning pain that had run through my calf. I gripped my stomach without thinking and he seemed to notice.

  "You'll get used to it," he said. "After all, there will be a lot of them before you're done."

  "Done what?" I had backed away into the furthest pew I could find, thinking that I might turn tail and tear out of the place after all, push myself between those two drunken doors and hop on my scooter and be out of there. But the other part needed explanation, and I wasn't leaving until I got it.

  He sighed as though he was losing patience. "Why do you think he was here?"

  I let go a sound somewhere between disgust and confusion. I didn't want to think about that man. I didn't want to remember all of those markings. What did it matter? He was gone.

  "Your guess is as good as mine," I said. "Catching some kind of psycho jollies. I suppose."

  If he was upset about the description, he didn't show it. His face was a flat pond of water. Not a single ripple of expression.

  "He was a reaper," he said.

  "Yeah, right." I snorted. "Not like any Grim Reaper I've seen," I said, thinking about the hooded skeleton figure memes that flooded social media on occasion.

  "You're right on that count," he said. "He was a different sort of reaper."

  "What sort of reaper?"

  "The kind that collects supernatural fares."

  "Supernatural like vampires and werewolves?" I could hear the sarcasm in my voice, but if he did he didn't respond to it.

  Instead, he nodded with a smile. "Exactly."

  "So let me guess," I said. "He's been watching too many horror movies and thought I was some sort of nasty Nosferatu coming to drink someone's blood."

  "Angel," he said.

  "I thought you said he was a reaper."

  He tapped his cane on the floor again. "Not him." His voice went sharp and firm. "You. You're the angel. Fallen, to be exact."

  I wasn't sure what I expected, but it certainly wasn't that. I could accept that the psychopath believed he was doing some grim, supernatural task. I could even accept that this new threat believed he had some sort of otherworldly power. People went into asylums all the time because of stuff like that. Subtract from the equation the magical glitter due to hallucinations from smoke inhalation, and a girl got a full-blown, walking, talking delusion. But that didn't mean I was an angel. And it certainly didn't mean I was a fallen one.

  A flush of heat washed over my skin.

  "I think maybe I should call the police," I said, searching frantically for my cell phone.

  "I wouldn't blame you," he said. "But they wouldn't answer anyway even if you could reach your phone."

  He held his hand up, palm facing me, and in another second, my phone was just there. He closed his fingers around it and then tossed it to me.


  "Perhaps you should sit down, Ayla," he said. "You look like you're going to pass out."

  I did feel woozy. I let my hand roam around behind me until it found the bench. I sank down on it and slumped into the back. I felt even hotter now, as though the flames that he had put out earlier were still licking their way toward me.

  "This isn't happening," I muttered. "I have to be dreaming."

  "No dream." I felt him press into the bench with me and I smelled that same sugary aroma again, except this time it didn't smell burned. It smelled as though it had been pumped up with air into gossamer threads. His smell, I realized. I looked sideways at him. I had the crazy thought that beneath that old man facade, he might have been handsome once. There was such an earnest look on his face that I knew whatever was actual fact, this man believed what he believed. I peered over at the altar where the maniac had been. Of course, he wasn't there now. He was in the top of Azrael's cane. I almost giggled. Either the psychopath had never been there in the first place, or this was real.

  I nodded at the top of Azrael's cane.

  "So he thought I was some supernatural creature and was trying to reap me?"

  "You are a supernatural creature," he said. "And that's exactly what he was doing. Reaping a fallen angel was his last fare before he could collect his wings again."

  I put my fingers to my temples to stave off the headache I felt tightening my scalp. Never mind that I had faced down a psychopath, killed a man, and just seen some impossible magic tricks--that last part was enough to make my skin hurt. My mind felt like it was going over the same track and couldn't jump out of its groove.

  "So he's dead, then," I said, thinking about the psychopath who had attacked me. "Really dead?"

  "Worse than dead," he said and tapped my lap with the top of his cane. "He's in here. In limbo."

  Struggle as I would to process that information, I kept going back to the original issue. The reason the man was trying to kill me in the first place. I couldn't take my eyes off the top of that cane.

  I sucked my teeth. "So limbo is real then?"

  He nodded.

  "Then God is a jerk if he thinks he can stuff souls into that little cane for eternity."