by Mark Tufo
The flares were bright enough to light up not only the belfry, but the perimeter of the churchyard as well. On the ground, Cherry was tending to Luke, which caused a flutter of jealousy in Sabrina’s chest.
Oh Lord, what if she sees his fangs? That will be harder to explain than the wings.
But she pushed those thoughts aside to concentrate on her mission. Even though she wasn’t quite sure what the mission was.
Sabrina flapped against the buffeting wind until she was hovering just outside the belfry. Roy held the sparking stumps of flares in each hand. A canvas bag beside him was filled with more flares, and she couldn’t be sure, but she thought he had a SCUBA diver’s spear gun slung over one shoulder.
“Roy, put down the flares,” she said, with as much command as she could muster. Those flares looked hot, and God had warned her that fire was her one weakness—because fire was the element of the devil.
Roy’s eyes were wild and watery, the burning light sparking against them and making him look demonic and insane. “You’re flying,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I knew you were something weird. I could smell it.”
“I’m weird? I’m not the one lighting flares in an abandoned church belfry and waving and yelling like crazy.”
“I’m on a mission from God,” Roy said.
Hey, that’s MY line. “I don’t think God would want you burning down a church.”
“I’m doing my sacred duty,” Roy said.
“Put down the flares,” she said, beating her wings so that she hovered ten feet away from the belfry.
“Sure thing, Blondie,” he said, hurling both flares at her. One rolled along her left wing, raising a steaming stench as it scorched her feathers. She didn’t feel any pain from that one, but the next flare bounced against her boobs and sizzled a moment before she spun it loose.
Hovering, she glanced down at her cleavage. The hot flames had left a red welt in the shape of a vee. She didn’t register the agony right away, but felt a deep disappointment at the marred flesh. God had done a pretty good job giving her a heavenly form, and now it would have a scar.
Female vanity. Even death doesn’t erase it.
But that was for later. For now, she was pissed at Roy, who somehow seemed even more Neanderthal. In the dark, he appeared hunched and thick, as if he had bulked up and become bloated with Budweiser.
“What are you waiting for?” Luke yelled from below, his voice thin.
“Those wings sure look real,” Cherry said.
Something glinted in the belfry and Sabrina realized Roy was trying to light another flare. “Drop it,” she shouted.
The flare sparked to life and radiated Roy’s sickening grin, which somehow seemed a foot wide. “You sure you want me to drop it?”
Sabrina didn’t want to be responsible for burning down a church, even a Methodist church. She fluttered around the belfry, Roy spinning in place to track her movements. Then he began waving the flare again, gibbering in tongues.
When he turned to look out at the stormy sea, she adjusted the angle of her wings and gave a strong stoke, hurtling toward him from behind. She accelerated faster than she had planned and barely had time to fold her wings before she hit the opening to the belfry. She struck Roy flush in the back, and it was like ramming into a chimney.
Roy let out an urk and the flare skittered from his hand, rolling toward the opening where the bell rope descended. He pitched forward onto his hands and knees.
Shaken, Sabrina flopped onto the hard wooden boards. Great. Now what?
The wound in her chest burned like the memory of a lost love, and she wondered how much fire it would take to disable her. Oh, she couldn’t die again, God had promised her that, but she didn’t know what would happen if she were burned at the stake or something. Would her ashes just lay there on the ground for all eternity?
Roy reached up and grabbed the ledge, lifting himself. With his free hand, he pulled the strap of the spear gun until it fell into his hand. The fallen flare quit sparking, but its dull glow lit the belfry and gave Roy’s face a sinister red tint.
“Feet of clay,” she said, the magic words that made the wings retract. Nothing happened.
Must be the burn, damaging your powers.
Sabrina rolled over, unable to fold her wings. In such cramped quarters, the wings were a major disadvantage, especially if she had to dodge high-powered spears at close range.
Sabrina calculated her options. A trap door to the left gave way to darkness, and she imagined crude rungs nailed to the wall to form a ladder. No way could she fit in there with her wings at full mast. She could leap out of the belfry, but she wasn’t sure her wings would work well enough to fly. Or she could sweet-talk him.
She reached for the bell rope and pulled herself to her feet.
“So,” she said. “Nice view up here, huh?”
Roy thrust the tip of the spear gun toward her. In the dim light, she saw that the tip wasn’t made of metal. No, it was a jagged length of wood, probably pulled from the interior of the church when he’d broken in.
“I hate angels,” he said. “But there’s one thing I hate more.”
“Politicians?”
He snarled. “Vampires.”
He turned and peered over the ledge to the ground, where Cherry was tending to Luke. In fact, she was tending him quite closely. She’d removed his shirt and was checking his abdomen for bruises.
Great, next she will be giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
“How did you know he was a vampire?”
“The same way he knew what I was. We’ve been dancing a long time.”
“Lucky you. I can’t even get him to do the cha-cha.” She gripped the rope, feigning weakness and letting her body go limp.
“Look at him down there,” Roy said. “How much longer before he rips into your friend’s neck? Disgusting.”
“If you knew he was a vampire, why did you come out here with us?”
“You really are an innocent, aren’t you?” Roy glanced at her, smirking.
“I have my moments,” she said defiantly.
“I can smell him on you, his depraved and lustful scent fouling your self-righteous body.” Roy’s voice had changed, the boozy frat-boy tone now deep and growly. “I can’t believe God would grant wings to the likes of you. But that just shows that God is weak, and the time of the Gog is at hand.”
“Dude, you’re talking like a killer clown in a bad horror movie,” Sabrina said, although she couldn’t help noticing again the ominous similarity between “God” and “Gog.”
“This is no business of His, or of yours.”
“Okay. Put down the pointy thingy and we’ll all be friends.” Sabrina didn’t like the way Roy shifted the spear gun to the ledge, aiming it down at Luke and Cherry.
“Too late for that, Sabrina Vickers,” Roy said.
“Oh, so we’re getting all formal now, huh? Is that in the bad-guy handbook or something?”
Roy raised the spear gun to his cheek and sighted down its length. Below, Luke was now in a sitting position, Cherry comforting him by smoothing his hair and whispering into his ear, or maybe kissing it.
“One to the heart should do it,” Roy said.
“Except for one thing,” Sabrina said.
“What?” Roy said without turning.
“His heart belongs to me.”
She yanked back on the rope, causing the old brass bell to clang. The reverberation shook the belfry and staggered Roy for a moment as he cupped one hand to the side of his head.
Sabrina leaned back, tugged the slack from the rope, and then flexed her wings behind her as she swung toward Roy like Tarzan on a jungle vine.
CHAPTER TEN
Sabrina tried to scream “Geronimo” but she didn’t have much of a swing. However, it was enough to get Roy to turn toward her. Her feet caught him flush in the ribs and knocked the spear gun from his hand. It tumbled over the ledge to the ground.
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nbsp; The bell rang again as Sabrina released the rope. Roy bellowed in anger and rushed at her, nearly tripping over the sack of signal flares. Sabrina retreated, planning to leap from the belfry and soar away, but the rope tangled in one of her wings.
She tried to fly free of it but instead only succeeded in looping it around one arm and her other wing as she spun. She hung there trussed like a chicken ready for butchering. The more she struggled, the tighter the rope bound her.
Under other circumstances, this could be kinky. Under circumstances where I’m not stuck with a sinister minion of the dark side.
Roy saw her vulnerability and grinned wickedly. “Ah, I will deal with him soon enough. He’s already weak. But you—you are full of surprises. Angels throughout the recent ages have all been weak, fops, fools, and fairies.”
“Hey, the flaming sword and all that tended to scare people off,” Sabrina said, baiting him with talk while her mind raced for an escape. “So we’ve gone for a softer, gentler approach.”
“Talk therapy,” Roy said. “Prayer circles. Lip service. Words instead of action.”
Okay, God, this would be a great time for You to show how omnipotent You are. How about a little lightning bolt out of the blue, or a bevy of bats, or a case of spontaneous combustion? I’ll even take a swarm of locusts or a rain of frogs.
God, apparently, was out of the “deus ex machine” business. Or maybe this was another of His tests.
Roy reached for the sack and brought up a flare, along with a lighter. “I hear angels don’t particularly like fire,” Roy said.
“Not true. You’ve been hanging out with evil people, and evil people lie all the time. I mean, nobody trusts a Gog, right?”
“I’m not a Gog. I’m a messenger.”
“Oh, like a dark angel, huh?”
Yes, very dark,” he said. “Let’s see if we can cast a little light.”
Roy thumbed the lighter and applied it to the flare, which began sparking furiously. He brought it closer to her face, and a few of the sparks cast pinpricks of pain along her exposed skin. Sabrina smelled smoke and wondered if her clothes had caught fire.
“It’s a shame to mar such a pretty face,” Roy said in his killer-clown voice. Then he tilted his head to one side, smiled, and added, “Actually, I’m in the shame game, so it’s all good.”
Luke and Cherry yelled from below, but Sabrina couldn’t see them. If Luke weren’t wounded, he would scale the wall in no time and rescue her. Cherry was about as menacing as a goldfish, so the odds were slim that she’d retrieve the spear gun and make a dramatic assault up the tiny belfry ladder.
And with God out playing golf with Moses or something, that meant Sabrina was on her own.
The flare was inches from her face, and her skin felt chapped. The flare glinted in Roy’s eyes, and she could have sworn she saw roiling pits of hell in there. If Roy was a messenger, she didn’t want to meet the guys he was summoning.
Summoning?
“Hey, Roy, aren’t you supposed to be waving those things around? The old ‘One if by land, two if by sea’? They might be angry if you let them down.”
Roy froze. “Goddamn.”
“Bible says not to take God’s name in vain.”
But Roy wasn’t listening. He began waving the flare wildly over his head again, ranting in Latin toward the sea. The offshore storm, which had seemed to weaken in intensity, now rumbled with renewed determination. The boiling purple froth churned toward land, flickering with trapped lightning.
Roy yanked another flare from the sack as the first one burned low. He discarded the dull red ember of the spent flare and continued signaling whatever mysterious forces required his attention.
Sabrina rocked back and forth a little, careful not to ring the bell. Soon her feet were near the spent flare, and she mashed her big toes together until the ember was snug between her Crocs.
This had better work or you’re toast.
It was time to channel Little Sabrina Vickers, the kid who had been an aspiring Olympic gymnast at the age of ten, until her body started filling out and spawned the unfortunate balance challenges caused by large boobs. Still, she had retained a lot of flexibility, thanks to yoga, Pilates, and modern dance she’d pursued as an adult. Well, until she’d died, anyway.
The ember had nearly burned through the rubber of her shoes and pain bolted up her legs. She lifted her legs and did a half-flip, dangling in the air as she applied the fire to the old rope. Her skirt parted and Roy would have gotten an eyeful if he turned to look.
But Roy kept on with his chanting, and somewhere below, Luke was yelling at her to “do something.”
Between Luke and God, she had plenty of bossy men in her life.
The remnant of the flare was fading fast, and Sabrina wondered if the flame would last long enough. The storm picked up force and the wind rattled the old belfry, causing the tin roofing to flap and whisking away the stench of burnt rope.
What will give first, my Crocs or the rope?
As it turned out, it was both at the same time.
The pain penetrated her insteps just as the rope gave way, and she bounced to the hard floor. Roy didn’t hear the impact above the wind. In fact, he started gibbering “They’re here! They’re here!”
Sabrina unraveled the rope from her arms and wings. Roy’s silhouette stood against the lesser black of the sky, the moon now almost completely obscured by clouds.
Out at sea, amid the boiling storm, a mighty flash of lightning revealed rows of sailing vessels: old frigates, galleons, and schooners. They were like a flotilla out of the past, ghost ships encroaching upon a world where they had no business.
Except the business of taking over the world.
Then the lightning faded and Sabrina wasn’t sure what she’d seen. Luke had told her about the tricks the water played on the eyes, especially for those with great imagination.
Still, Roy had been summoning something.
And he still was. He held out his remaining flare and waved as if to signal the ships to the island and a safe harbor.
Now unfettered, Sabrina launched herself at her nemesis again, this time managing a hard downstroke of wings that sent them both hurtling out of the belfry.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sabrina realized she enjoyed flying, despite the circumstances. She held Roy in her arms, though his weight threatened to drag her into a nosedive and slam into the sand below. They plummeted toward the sandy road below.
At the last moment, she arched her back and angled her wings so that Roy’s feet barely skimmed the ground, and then they were ascending into the night sky.
“Damn you, Angel,” Roy said, trying desperately to ram the flare in her face.
She dodged his blows, cutting a weaving pattern in the air. They were now a hundred feet above the abandoned village, Sabrina gliding on the gusts of the coming storm to gain altitude.
“Stop it or I drop you,” she said. “I don’t know what’s inside a Gog, but I’ll bet it leaves a greasy spot down there on Main Street.”
“I must complete my mission,” Roy said, still wriggling.
“Me, too,” Sabrina said. “Too bad for you that good always defeats evil.”
“The hour is upon us, Sabrina Vickers,” Roy snarled. His flare extinguished and he let is fall into darkness. “It is the time of the Gog.”
“Tell you what,” Sabrina shouted into his ear as she fought against the salty headwind. “If you’re in such a hurry for the end of the world, let me help you.”
God had commanded people not to kill. It was such an important commandment that it was, like, sixth on the list, far below the important stuff like not having any other Gods before the Big Guy, because He was a mighty and jealous God.
So in absence of 24-hour tech support to receive guidance on the decision, she decided that breaking Rule Six to protect Rules One and Two was a pretty righteous deal.
Sabrina flapped hard until she was high over the ocean. The approaching s
torm frothed and spat with escalating violence, near hurricane strength. Her hair blew wildly behind her and her skirt fluttered. Despite her enhanced strength, her arms ached from holding Roy, and the burn wounds stung her in several places.
Still, she flew with determination against the teeth of the rising wind. Roy shouted something but she couldn’t hear him. It sounded suspiciously like “Smell the glove.”
And then she released him.
Roy made one quick, clawing grab for her and slipped away, and in the last moment his eyes were wide and bloodshot and he looked for all the world like Roy the ex-frat boy, a little too wealthy and drunk for his own good, but relatively harmless.
But before Sabrina could reconsider, he was out of reach and dropping toward the frothy surface of the Atlantic. There was a white eruption where he struck, and then he was gone.
It could have been her imagination, but the storm seemed to ease almost instantly. She peered into the murky depths of the ragged clouds, but she didn’t see any ships.
Imagination.
CHAPTER TWELVE
She veered and glided back to the abandoned village of Portsmouth. Cherry was still tending to Luke, although now she had his shirt completely off and appeared to be applying the Heimlich maneuver and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at the same time. Except Sabrina had never seen the Heimlich maneuver applied from the front, and as far as Sabrina knew, there wasn’t anything lodged in Luke’s throat.
Cherry looked up as Sabrina alighted rather clumsily beside them. The clouds had parted a little and moonlight seeped down to bathe them and the church in a milky wash.
“How is he?” Sabrina asked.
“Uh, seems to be okay,” Cherry said. “I checked him out pretty good.”
“I’ll bet.” She leaned over her vampire boyfriend. “Okay, I’ll take it from here.”
Cherry stood a few feet away while Sabrina examined the splinter in the moonlight. Luke’s eyes fluttered open. His complexion appeared to be its usual shade of wan creaminess, and his heartbeat was the usual six beats a minute. She was annoyed to notice that an erection strained against the zipper of his jeans.
