Angel Eyes

by Al K. Line

  "There you go then. Trust me, if you go back every few days, or call them and say you're worried and he's still missing, they'll look into it a bit. But once, er, once certain things are found, then it'll all be over." I was watching my words because I was paranoid the girls might come in, but I needn't have worried, they were engrossed in their show.

  "This is so terrible. What have I done? What about the girls?" Vicky broke down, and judging by the look George gave me this certainly wasn't the first time it had happened while they were out.

  "They're young, they're strong like their mum, so they will be fine. Besides, you said they were scared of him. They told you. You just have to make sure you tell them the right thing, that Daddy had an accident which is what he has had, totaled his car, probably be found in a few days. They'll get over it, same as you will. Right? Right?"

  "Right," said Vicky.

  "You understand what I'm telling you? It's all taken care of. He had an accident. He crashed his car. Give it a few days and then you can grieve and go to his funeral and then get on with life."

  Vicky burst out crying.

  "Dad!"

  "What? What did I say?"

  Sometimes, make that all the time, I really don't understand women. I didn't back then, I don't now, and I never will.

  She was the one who killed him, why was she getting upset about his bloody funeral? Because they'd shared a life together, that was why. That she loved him and hated him and more than anything wanted the life she'd pretended she had. Now it was over. For ever. Gone. She had killed her husband and I think it was only now it was sinking in, the repercussions becoming a reality.

  "Sorry, I was being insensitive. Today took a lot out of you, you were brave, very brave. Go lie down, have a rest, we'll watch the girls."

  Vicky looked absolutely awful. Eyes sunken, dark bags underneath, hair sticking out, and when she stood I had to catch her or she'd have fallen over. I said nothing, but she felt bony and I knew this level of stress would be playing havoc with her. She stumbled off upstairs without a word, without even telling the girls. She really was out of it to be that remiss.

  George and I spoke for a while as we prepared dinner, something simple but hearty so everyone would tuck in, and we both agreed on one thing. Vicky should rest and she was to be made to eat no matter what. I knew her, and she would run until she collapsed, would forget to eat, focusing solely on the girls, and then everything would spiral out of control. I'd seen it before, it was happening now, so she had to take it easy.

  The girls came in later and moaned about the Buster Keaton short I was watching, then, after a while, they began to laugh, and to ask about the show, and then we were all laughing, even George, who usually just rolled her eyes at his antics. For the first time in what felt like years, and had maybe never happened, the kitchen was filled with genuine laughter, young and old and in-between.

  Everyone forgot about the world outside and even Vicky, when she surfaced, looking a little better for a nap, laughed a little. Maybe at the show, or maybe because she was so relieved that her girls were happy.

  It was the oddest thing, but we had a nice dinner. Vicky ate everything put on her plate, the girls chattered about things that were entirely alien to me, music and friends and fashion and new ways of talking to their friends that didn't involve actually picking up a phone and speaking, and then before we knew it they were in bed.

  Soon, the kitchen was clean, and the three adults sat around drinking coffee, talking about this and that, keeping conversation light. Why? Because we had so much serious stuff to talk about and do that nobody wanted to go there as we knew the mood would darken and none of us wanted that darkness.

  For a while we just wanted to be content with each others' company and lock out the madness that waited just outside the door.

  Alone and Dangerous

  George had plans and I told her not to change them. She was a good girl and was more than willing to stay home to look after Vicky and the girls, but I wanted her to carry on with her life, not get caught up in our mess. Vicky was obviously beat, and didn't even insist on coming out with me. Besides, she couldn't, as she had to look after her children and nothing would make her leave them alone.

  After George left, I gathered my wits—the hardest thing to find—then got my gear together, which mostly consisted of ensuring I had the book, my hat, my wand, and putting on a jacket. I promised Vicky life would return to normal soon, or a new normal anyway, and that we were sure to have lots of wild new adventures.

  I also insisted that under no circumstance was she to open the door to anyone, or anything. I was paranoid, but rightfully so. The wards were there to protect her, nothing could get past them, but she was not to invite anyone in, that way lay disaster. As long as she stuck to those rules she'd be fine and the girls were in the safest place possible. She agreed, I left.

  Rather than drive to the barn and go directly to the city and meet with the friendly local vampires, I decided to take advantage of my good mood and go for a walk. Mousehole, the local village, was an astonishing place but I hadn't spent much time there lately, having been preoccupied with this and that as is the way for us wizards, and I missed it. I missed the harbor, the steep hills, the tiny fisherman's cottages, the peace and the feeling of timelessness that settled over the place when it wasn't tourist season.

  All the sightseers and holiday makers were long gone now, just the locals left. They'd all be tucked up in their beds, sleeping soundly, nothing but the crash of distant waves, the screeching of gulls, the water lapping against the harbor walls, the creak of boats both ancient and new, and that rarest of things, the sound of nothingness. No sirens wailed here, no air pollution, just a brisk sea breeze that calmed the spirit and settled the mind.

  I almost ached for such solitude and peace, so I drove to the heart of the village, parked up in a side street, stepped out onto the ancient cobbles and felt instantly at home.

  It truly was a beautiful place, unspoiled even after years of heavy tourism, much like the rest of Cornwall. It kept its integrity and spirit intact, and although more than half the houses were owned by weekenders, and the locals could hardly afford to rent let alone buy, it somehow still held many families that had made it their home for generations. Of course, it would all change for the worse over time, but right now, right here, and in this moment, it was still a quaint, ancient, perfect fishing village. Quiet, proud, and accepting. Just like the locals.

  I wandered lazily down to the harbor, feeling the salt sting my eyes and the wind bite my cheeks, rejoicing in nature's gift. Searing away the last vestiges of manic aggression and anger I felt, scouring me clean and wholesome only for a while. Boats bobbed on the still water at the harbor and I stepped right up to the edge, let my feet inch over the paving that dropped down into the water, and stared into the black depths, seeing nothing but the reflection of the few street lights I knew switched off soon.

  At that thought they did switch off, and the village became dark, just a few small lights dotted about the harbor stopping it from being pitch black. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I made out the shapes of boats and the piles of fishing gear dotted around the harbor ready for the morning. I smelled fish and salt, sand and water, nothing more.

  My footsteps echoed around the harbor as I wandered with no end in mind, just walking to enjoy the ambiance and soak up the peace and energy only water and hundreds of years of honest human work can provide.

  Finally, I settled up on one of the high walls that stopped the worst of the weather from encroaching and ensured the harbor waters were still, defenses that fought harder every year to protect the coastline. I dangled my legs over the edge, facing the sea. I listened to lone gulls far away as they screeched, refusing to sleep for whatever reason, and let the sound of the waves fill my mind until it became a meditation of sorts.

  This was real life, this was the truth of the world. All our stupid games and the crap we did, all our worries and stre
sses, our pre-occupations and our obsession with minutiae, it meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. I was a little man on a little wall in a little village in a little country in a world where there was more water than land in a universe where nearly everything was emptiness. Kind of puts things into perspective.

  So it was with much regret that I swung my legs over the wall, adjusted my hat, brushed my hair from my eyes, turned my attention from inward to out, and stood with a sigh.

  I turned my back on the vastness and the peace, faced back toward the village, and traced the movements of the foggy shape as it darted from one tenebrous space to the next. It was ephemeral and kept flickering as if trying to find a solidity, huge then small, animal then human then nothing of the sort. Jagged then smooth, black as the harbor water then nothing but a whisper.

  All the while, strange slivers of sound came to my ears. Wails and pleas, threats and promises, words that were no words and emotions beyond my grasp. Needs so deep I failed to grasp their true importance, desire so strong that it reached out and almost strangled me.

  I walked toward this assault, knowing the time had come. That here, in a tiny fishing village on the edge of the country, I was to finally come face to face with an angel straight from a heaven I didn't believe in. And do battle.

  Feathers

  The shrouded mass darted this way and that, knocking over lobster pots, pulling over large frames holding fishing nets, and generally acting crazed. Hell, it even dragged an anchor and chain around as it spasmed in a frenzy, as though it couldn't quite get a grip on this reality. I stopped and waited, unafraid, past that now, just wanting this to be resolved so I could go home and put my feet up and watch Buster Keaton until I wore out the discs.

  I spun as the shade shot up onto the high defensive wall, and was confronted with a spreading soot that stretched out then began to coalesce.

  "Make your bloody mind up," I muttered.

  I had to hand it to the guy, he knew how to make a dramatic appearance. Small lightless feathers fell from nowhere all around. I held out my calloused hand, steady as a rock, and let a fluffy feather like that of a newborn chick settle in my palm as before. I blew it and it sailed off, then came to rest on the water.

  Mesmerized, I watched the angel consolidate, drawing power from somewhere until there was a faint outline of something humanoid. Then the air crackled and energy from the heavens shot down like black lightning, and the angel screamed. Midnight shards of ephemeral strangeness careened off in all directions, the feathers fell like rain until there were enough to make a lovely eiderdown duvet, and the semi-figure curled up on itself until all I could make out was an amorphous blob.

  Lightning cracked the sky again, dark as the depths of the deepest ocean, but it was edged with silver this time, and it lit up the harbor until it was like day, everything luminous. Blinded, I covered my eyes, praying it hadn't done permanent damage, but moments later all was drab again and I removed my hand cautiously.

  The air had taken on a lightness, as if imbued with something holy, as though the angel had called down heavenly light to dispel the emptiness. It was a twilight, that moment before day and night when the world becomes almost monochrome, when the sun has set yet it isn't quite dark. Up on the high harbor wall, fifteen feet above me, I watched the angel unfurl. It was a solid presence now. Dense, foreboding, powerful. The silver light remained, outlining every part of the angel as it stood.

  A man stood above me, large and muscular, one of those annoying figures you see in magazines, all paper-thin skin and six pack abs. Plates of steel for a chest and shoulders so wide you want to hack them off and tell the dude to get a normal body like everyone else. He was handsome, somehow managing to be slender yet well-muscled, a body that made me dislike him even more. Even his bloody thighs were chiseled, a teardrop for a quadriceps—he probably had muscles on his toes. Yet at the same time he managed to look streamlined and in proportion, probably because the muscle wasn't excessive, was just an illusion because of his ultra-low body fat.

  He was also tall, six two maybe, with a handsome face and impossibly straight hair that hung down like a black sheet on a washing line when there's no wind. He raised his head but most of him was in shadow, nothing to do with the light. He created his own, was more shadow than not, so I couldn't see his features or too much definition as he inched forward. Thankfully, that included angel penis, as I really wasn't in the mood for such things, and it would feel dirty even to me to be staring at such an appendage. If it was on show I knew I'd have to look, just to say I'd seen one.

  He lifted his arms out to the side, continuing the drama, and then his wings sprang out behind the silhouette of a cross. Huge, slender, perfect wings in proportion to his body unfurled with a grace no human could ever have, and then they snapped into position, each feather divine, splayed at the edges like long, sensual fingers.

  This creature wasn't just black like we think of it as color, he was darkness itself. As though he sucked in the light and made it his own. He created shadow. It writhed across his body and now and then reached out for something solid and slithered about at his feet, crawled down the wall of the harbor with inquisitive tendrils as if searching for something.

  Not something. Me. I didn't know what this was, this shadow, but I knew I didn't want it anywhere near me, that its touch would not be good, that he controlled it and could use it like rope to bind me. Call it intuition, call it paranoia, but I took several steps back and whistled up at the dude now his entrance had been made.

  "Very impressive," I shouted. "You gonna lay an egg next?"

  "You have what is mine," he said, the voice gentle but full of malice. A warning. No more games.

  "It belongs to somebody else now. I'm just the delivery guy. You'll have to wait, take it up with him when he takes possession."

  "I must have it. You will give it to me." His wings ruffled and angled upward. Was he going to launch? Fly above me and drop angel poop on my hat?

  "Look, buster, we've been through this. I don't own it, it isn't mine to give. Can't we talk about this, come to an agreement without all this bloody nonsense? What's so important about it anyway?" I figured I may as well ask as nobody else had told me a damn thing about this bloody book, and I had a good mind to just throw it into the water and be done with the whole sorry mess. Although I assumed the angel would have something to say about that.

  "You foolish child. You know nothing of the things you steal. You are consumed by greed, care nothing for the truth."

  "So, enlighten me."

  "Enough. I have not come to discuss such matters. We. Are. Done."

  That sounded pretty final to me, and besides, I was becoming cold, so thought maybe going home and sitting by a radiator in my nice clean kitchen without any freaky dudes waving their feathers at me sounded nice right about now. I backpedaled, keeping my eyes on this creature, wishing I knew more about angels and more about this one in particular.

  What was his name? Where had he come from? What could he actually do to me? I thought back to my musings after he'd destroyed Bones and his crew, and decided I must have been right. If I didn't have hate in my heart, didn't try to destroy him, maybe he had to abide by the same set of rules? Damn angels, way too complicated.

  I dared not turn my back on him though, because this was all conjecture, and the truth was I didn't know what he was capable of. Nobody I knew had ever met an angel before. You couldn't summon them, couldn't draw a circle, call their name, and make them appear like you could with many of the demon sub-genres. Angels were different, and angels were far more dangerous than most demons. But it was all from stories. I'd never been told of a genuine encounter before, just read about them or heard second-hand tales passed down from master to pupil. And you know what the old guys are like with their tales. They love to embellish, freak out their pupils.

  But what mainly concerned me was what kind of angel was this? One from up there, or one from down below? Not in the physical sense, h
eaven and hell, as the afterlives and the eternities that exist don't work like that, it's much more complicated, but you still had what I guess you can call the holy and the damned. Those who felt nothing but disdain for humanity, and those who sympathized with us poor fools suffering down here on our rock hurtling through space towards its destruction.

  But it was still pretty insignificant to them. They came from places where the struggles of humanity were more of an abstract concept than anything they related to. Their lives, their immortality, their existence was like comparing that of an ant to a spaceman. They had a whole different perspective on things. This I knew from what I'd learned, but I could also sense it, feel it, knew it to be true just by being in his presence.

  He saw all of this as troubling, an inconvenience, and he was definitely pissed, but on the scale of things, on the scale of his immortal life, it wasn't like it mattered to him that much. Yet, at the same time it did, and this was what confused me. He wanted this book very badly, yet I sensed this was a brief distraction, something that would be entirely forgotten once finished with. I suppose if you live forever, have been about since before man even knew he was a man, and would be around long after humanity ceased to exist, then dealing with cocky wizards isn't something that holds much weight.

  Well, it meant plenty to me, and until I knew more about this guy I was going to do everything I could to stay away from him.

  So, brimming with magic, something I knew he respected, I opened my mind to the vastness, focused my will, and I disappeared.

  Yeah, that's right, The Hat has mad skills when he's on form.

  Goddamn

  "Ugh, fuck, fuck, fuck." Something went seriously wonky and I felt my body melting like I was turning into water. I was over-confident, figured I could bring up an old spell, that muscle memory, okay, wizard memory, would ensure that it worked flawlessly. But it hadn't, and I was lying flat on the ground with my face pressed into something fishy that had been trodden on by who knew how many people.