Nick glared at them. “Why are you so greedy that you think you should steal from a stranger?”
The three men backed farther away and then the two who had taken hold of him began to run. They disappeared into a thicket that lined the road. The third man seemed frozen to the spot. His mouth hung open and he looked like a beached carp unable to draw breath. Finally he was able to speak. “What in God’s name are you?”
Nick began to laugh, the sound full and throaty and full of sarcasm. His laughter further unnerved the would-be thief. His eyes bulged and saliva dripped from his slack lips. Suddenly Nick was silent. After a few pregnant moments while the man below him waited in stunned wonderment Nick said in a quiet, menacing voice, “Run.”
The man hesitated no longer. He turned and ran after his companions as if his legs were on fire and the devil on his heels.
Nick came back to earth, wiped the spot of blood from his mouth where he had been hit. His great wings folded and were drawn down and back until they vanished. As he walked on, Nick wondered what might have happened if he’d swooped over them with a cry for vengeance. Or if he'd lifted the two men even higher into the sky.
Days after this incident he was on a little used road far from any town or city and night was coming on. He yearned to hear a voice, any voice, and to share a meal with someone, for he had not eaten in two days. He came upon a farm house, its paint peeling, a flea-bitten dog in the yard. Hearing the clink of glass on glass, Nick saw colored bottles dangling by the dozens in a nearby cottonwood tree.
He approached cautiously, intrigued by the place. It was so isolated, yet he could tell someone lived here.
The dog stood up and wagged a long, black tail. He showed his teeth in a smile. Nick reached down and ruffled the fur at its neck. The dog followed him up the rickety steps to the front door.
Suddenly the door was flung open and a woman stood before him. She was in her fifties, he surmised, a rotund woman of wide girth. Her hair was a mass of frazzled gray curls and her ocean gray eyes blazed with an intelligence he hadn’t seen in a long while.
He put up his hands in surrender though she carried no weapon. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I’ve been on the road and I’m hungry. I’d be happy to work for a meal if you can spare it.”
“You’re a pretty boy,” she said, surprising him. She stepped onto the porch so that he had to step back from her. “I’m not scared of you, though, if that’s what you think.”
He waited and knew he dare not smile.
“See that box of bottles over there?” She pointed to the end of the porch where a wooden crate stood full of all manner of glass bottles—cold drink bottles, medicine bottles, food bottles. A rainbow of glass.
He nodded. “Yes, m’am.”
“There’s a roll of wire in there. Hang those bottles for me in the bottle tree and then come inside. I’ll feed you.”
She left him to it. He carried the crate to the willow tree, found the roll of rusty wire, and a pair of wire snips. He carefully threaded wire around each bottle neck and hung them one by one from the branches. He saw there was a sort of pattern to the display and tried to follow it, placing each bottle equidistant from its neighbors. A wind came up as he worked, rattling the bottles so it sounded like the bones of skeletons dancing in the near evening.
The moon had risen while he worked. The dog watched while he attached the last bottle, then followed him back to the porch and the open door. Light spilled from within to throw his outline as a long shadow. The scent of meat and vegetables cooking in a pot caused his mouth to fill with water.
She motioned him to sit at the table while she took up the stew and ladled some into a bowl for him. She took a chair across the table, filling a bowl for herself and one for the dog. She set the dog’s bowl on the floor at her feet.
It smelled delicious. He could taste garlic and onion and a variety of spices as he hurriedly ate the stew. She ate more slowly, all the while keeping an eye on him.
“This is too kind of you,” he said as she refilled his bowl and handed him a thick crust of bread to go with it.
“You’re not right,” she said, startling him.
He looked up from beneath hair that had grown long and shaggy over his forehead. He had been around long enough to know that when humans lived alone too long they often began to speak whatever came into their minds. There was no stopper. There wasn't even a latch. It all spilled out. It sometimes startled him, but not to the point where he was unnerved because he understood it.
“You’re not what you seem to be, is what I mean,” she explained. Her mouth was pursed and her brow wrinkled in question.
She was what he thought of as a far-seer. He recognized that quality about her now. She saw more than was normally seen; she saw the underneath. He had discovered over the long years that some human beings were more gifted than others. Some read minds, some saw the future before it happened, and some, like this woman, saw down below the skin and flesh to the heart of things.
“Am I right?” she prodded, holding him fast in a steady gaze.
He nodded, but continued to eat the flavorful stew, his eyes averted from her.
“You’re not bad,” she said. “But you’re…lost…and I don’t mean lost on the road.” She took a spoonful of the stew, but never stopped looking at him.
“Perceptive,” he said, wiping out the bowl with the last crust of bread and then popping it into his mouth. “But what makes you think I’m not ‘bad’?”
“Mo-mo didn’t bite you. In fact, he took to you right off. That’s the only reason I let you handle my bottles.”
The dog glanced up at his mistress at the mention of his name. His snout went right back down into the bowl. He liked the stew as well as the people at the table.
“You always rely so much on the dog? Is that wise?” He pushed back from the table to contemplate her.
“He knows more than me and you both.”
“I see. Well, he’s a treasure then, what with you out here by yourself.”
She stood and began to clear the table. She took the empty and tongue-wiped clean bowl from the dog. “I’m not alone if I got Mo-Mo so you’re awfully mistaken.”
“What do you think I am?” he asked just to see what she would say.
She ran water in the sink, her back to him. “I’m not sure.” She was hesitant.
“Can you guess?”
She turned to him. “Would you tell me instead? It’s not like I’m in any position to repeat it to anyone.”
“It wouldn’t do you any good. No one would believe you.”
“I figured.” She paused. “So? What are you, devil or angel?”
“You’ve already answered that, haven’t you, when you said I wasn’t bad?”
“Angel.”
“Just so.” He leaned back in the chair.
“God sent? Guardian?” she asked.
“Neither, I’m afraid.”
“Lost your wings,” she stated.
“No.” He concentrated, changing molecules he had long left dormant. Wings burst from his back, nubs of darkness that swelled and grew and caused him to stand from the chair to accommodate their length. In less than a half minute he stood before her revealing the fantastic and majestic creature he truly was.
“Oh my,” she breathed, covering her mouth with a hand.
“I’m not bad,” he said. “You need have no fear, just as you first assumed.”
She came to the table and sat down, looking up at him and the now spread black wings that reached out into the crowded room. “God have mercy.”
“He has no mercy for me, and that is my predicament.”
She blinked, whispering, “He has mercy for us all. Perhaps you've only forgotten all his promises...”
#
Nick spent two months with Marva, the companion and friend of Mo-Mo, the owner of the bottle tree, the far-seer. She had questions for him, naturally, but not many he knew the answer for. He told her about Angelique an
d how he’d fled from her and the evil he couldn't abide. He spoke of Mary and an earthly love affair that had left him broken. He tried to speak of the vast darkness where he’d been imprisoned too long to remember, but it was difficult for a human mind to comprehend the endlessness of it, the bone chilling cold, the agony of self locked within self.
She told him her life story in return. How she’d always known the insides of people and things, even as a child. How she’d been orphaned and then widowed, always left alone by others, and finally how she'd found a little peace from the “ratty people” as she called them who scared her and made her shrink away. She’d adopted Mo-Mo, having found him wandering the highway. The bottle tree? It was just a communion with nature, she said, having no other words to explain it. The sound of the tingling glass, the prisms of color that rainbowed the ground when the sun hit the bottles—these things made her happy and she trusted that was reason enough to do it.
“Tell me more about the ‘ratty people’ you try to avoid,” he said. “Do you mean they’re evil, like Angelique?”
“Evil, I don’t know about. They’re dead inside and their hearts are black—black as your wings.”
“I guess I should look deeper into the people I meet on my journey.”
“If you do, you’ll end up like me, a crazy old crone living alone in some isolated place. Is that what you want?”
He considered the question. “No, I’d rather not do that. It would limit my experiences and that, I think, is all I have.”
She studied him. “For an angel, you don’t have a lot of wisdom at hand, do you?”
He laughed at her abrupt way of speaking. “I guess I don’t. How would I know? You’re the one who can see inside. If I have no wisdom, you’d be the one to know.”
Now she looked saddened. “You're looking for your wisdom.” She paused. “You’re leaving soon, aren’t you? I can feel it.”
“Yes.”
“You’re on a mission, but you don’t know what it is.”
“I guess so.”
“She’ll come after you, you know.”
“Angelique? I know.”
“She’s a warrior. She wants it all, heaven and earth. She wants you to...to help her.”
“She can’t have everything she wants, even you know that,” he said. “None of us get everything.”
“You’ll be careful? I know you cloak your soul; it was mighty hard to get to a place and an angle where I could see it. But she’s even greater than I ever could hope to be, from what you’ve told me. She sees farther, deeper, with more precision.”
“I’ll be careful.”
What he did not say was that now they’d opened up to one another, Marva was the one in danger. He did not say it because he was sure she knew that.
He did say, “You’ll be careful, too?”
She agreed that she would, to the best of her abilities, and then she packed him a satchel of food and sent him on his way, but not before hugging him close. He loved her and in return he felt her love for him. They were no longer strangers, but family. Leaving her was like a small death.
He knew he would never forget her. She was the first to teach him anything and an unlikely person to do that, too. He knew now that he had to stop keeping to himself so much. There had to be other teachers walking the earth, humans who knew more in some ways than angels could ever imagine.
CHAPTER 21
TRACKING NISROC
Angelique reclined on a chaise lounge, her legs covered by a knitted shawl. She had dismissed the house staff. The house echoed every creak from a high wind rising outdoors. Charlotte was experiencing hurricane season and a storm from out of the Atlantic beat at the walls with pelting rain and gusts of wind that made the whole house groan.
She shivered and drew the shawl closer around her small waist, tucking her hands beneath. The fire in the fireplace that had been laid by the housekeeper was dying down. She should get up and tend to it, but she didn’t move.
Fury and a feeling of betrayal had plagued Angelique for weeks. She had given Nisroc his very life! Hadn’t she granted him reprieve? Hadn’t she found him a body and called to Nisroc to infuse it with his spirit, giving him another chance on earth? Wasn’t she the only angel capable of having created such a miracle?
And how did he repay her? Just because he had spent a couple of decades attached to the pitiful creature, Mary, and then lost her to mortal death, he had walked away from his obligations to his master, to her!
She had known that an angel coupling with a human was an action headed toward disaster. They could not afford attachment to humans; she had told him that. Unless they succumbed in some strange way the two of them could live hundreds of years in the bodies they occupied. Even the blood that flowed through their veins and arteries was not truly human any longer. Why had he disobeyed and ignored her warnings? Why had he allowed himself to be so mesmerized by a mere human female?
She could not understand it.
She didn’t know how Nisroc was doing it, but when she searched for him with the power of her mind, she could not discover him. He had vanished quickly and thoroughly. He had left even before she had known the woman was dead. Now he was like a small light at the end of a tunnel. The closer she came to it, the more it withdrew, keeping the distance constant.
“Where are you?” she asked aloud. Her voice broke the silence in the room. She glanced again at the dying fire and shivered with cold.
What was she to do now? She had a telephone in the house installed and took care of their business affairs that way. But she could not remain alone, a child without a parent, without a guardian. He had left her high and dry, crippled in this world. Her story to the house staff that her “father” was on a business trip could not suffice as an excuse for his absence forever. Someone would eventually tell the authorities that a child lived alone in the house at 10122 Garden Place.
She knew what she must do, what Nisroc’s leaving was forcing her to do. She would have to abandon the carefully created persona of Angelique of Charlotte, North Carolina, give up her home, her income sources, and start all over again. Since she could not yet bring down another angel to take Nisroc’s place, she would have to again find a human to manipulate into playing the role of a parent to her.
Yet she cringed at the very thought. Humans were temporary. She had to keep them in check all the time by instilling fear. They were prone to run away, even to commit suicide.
She wouldn't do it! She'd have no more truck with the weak little creatures!
She sighed and threw back the cover from her legs. She rushed over to the fireplace and dropped another log into the coals. She stood holding her hands out to catch the warmth until the chill left her body.
She couldn’t wait any longer. She was already in jeopardy. Tomorrow she’d call the bank and request an officer bring her all the cash left in the account. She could imitate Nicroc's voice enough to do that. She would pack a bag. She would leave Charlotte behind and head west, where she knew Nisroc had run. It is all she knew for sure. He was going west.
Maybe if she got close enough to him, she could pick up his thoughts. If she ever found him…
Her mouth twisted in anger. Had Nisroc been present she knew she would have torn him apart with her teeth if she had to. He had given her no warning. He had taken nothing, not his clothes, not money. He’d made the arrangements for Mary to be properly buried in the Catholic graveyard and then he had immediately disappeared.
How could a fallen angel truly love anyone? The idea was alien to her. Hadn’t love been striped from them as punishment for rebellion? How had her most trusted angel been able to love and why had he disappointed her again—the one being in all creation he owed everything to?
The window panes rattled in their sashes from the force of the wind. Angelique glared at the night beyond where wind screamed at the eaves and rain slashed at the boards of the house. It was an angry night. It suited her mood perfectly. Were she a force of nature, she
would be a hurricane. Full of ruthless devastation. Pumped with electric energy. Swirling with dark clouds full of debris.
“I’ll find you,” she muttered.
A limb of a tree cracked and struck the ground with thunder just outside the windows. It sounded like a small bomb going off.
“Do your worst!” she screamed, holding up her fists to heaven, stomping her feet, twirling with unbridled fury. She rose from the floor and pounded her fists on the ceiling, screaming her wrath. “You can’t kill me,” she shouted. “You can’t stop me! My will be done, not yours!”
With her passion depleted, she floated slowly back to the floor. The log had caught fire so that flames danced in the fireplace, throwing shadows across the polished marble floor. She neared the hearth and held out her hands, warming herself, scowling so fiercely her face was a mask of hatred.
As the night droned on with lightning strikes and wind gusts, Angelique trundled off to bed unconcerned with the storm. She crawled beneath a mass of quilts, covering her head. She dreamed of Nisroc and a black dog. She saw bottles hanging from the limbs of a tree, scattering rainbow light across a bare yard. “There you are,” she whispered in her sleep. “Traitor! Deceiver!”
In the dream her angel companion ignored her, but the dog turned his head and stared right at her. He barked, showing his teeth and Angelique smiled. “Tell me where you are, little pup. Tell me how to find you.”
The dreamscape widened to show an old house with a porch, an old woman at the door. There was fear in the woman’s dull gray eyes. Angelique moved toward her, hands outstretched. “I’m coming,” she said softly. “I think I know right where you are…”
#
She did not know where he was. If she did she would have already made herself known. Nick knew once he left, Angelique could not go it alone. Since she’d tried to bring down more angels and so far had failed for reasons neither of them understood, she would either come for him or train a human to take his place. Knowing Angelique, she’d come for him. She’d want to mete out punishment first, then bind him to her in some way he could never get free again.
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