skies over the Aeolian archipelago in the Mediterranean. "You rang?"
"On his nibs' orders," Grace answered, but she stifled her smile.
Popping in as he had done reeked of disregard for rules meant to
protect stray mortals from witnessing such unearthly events. It set
Grace's teeth to clacking, too. "If you're going to materialize, you
simply must do it elsewhere and use the door! You're an Avenger,
Kiel," she reminded him sternly.
And unnecessarily. He knew his job, had taken to it like a duck to
water. In an earth year, he'd avenged well over one hundred
injustices, but his penchant for popping in and out unnerved her
completely.
Still, she harbored a soft spot in her angel's heart for Kiel. Time
had little meaning to angels over the millenia, but he had only
recently made his transition to the celestial. His leftover earthly
sensibilities charmed her angelic socks right off.
He went around calling the other angels "halos." Thought it was a cat
chief acronym than the DBAA. Heaven's Avengers Local One-o-one, for
pity's sake!
He grinned as shamelessly as any mortal, and slouched like one. He was
one in all save a technical sense, but he flirted like the very
devil.
Grace Was immune, naturally, having been around long enough to have
bounced Methuselah on her knee, but if she'd ever had a son, which she
hadn't, she'd have picked Ezekiel. On the other hand, she wouldn't
have wanted a daughter anywhere near this earth angel.
Angelo's voice boomed out. "Now, Ezekiel?"
"Here I am to stand and deliver," Kiel deadpanned for Grace, slouching
against her desk. He materialized a bouquet of miniature pink and
purple snapdragons for her vase, and despite her cons, Grace blushed
with pleasure.
It wasn't on the recommended list of celestial powers to convert energy
to matter, but Kiel had energy to burn and a very undeveloped sense of
angelic restraint. "Have a good one, Gracie."
He bounded up the steps to the second-story balcony and sauntered into
Angelo's office. A little guardian angel who reminded Kiel of Elmer
Fudd in a temper tantrum, could hardly contain himself to one place,
never mind a chair. Angelo took in Kiel's presence and introduced him
to the Guardian
"Ezekiel, DBAA, this is Clarence, DBGA - uh ... Guardians, that is.
Certainly one of the most... proactive Guardians in the history of the
cosmos."
Clarence fumed, apparently divining proactive wasn't exactly meant to
he a compliment. "One little traffic jam," he complained. He toted an
abacus of some age, and when he manipulated the beads, his pudgy
fingers flew. "One hundred-and-three fender benders. Minor ones at
that. So what's the big deal?"
By way of answering What was the big deal, Angelo glowered, creating a
small burst of light energy. Kiel stifled a grin. Clarence was a dead
ringer for the literary depictions of a thirteenth-century monk
potbellied and sporting a fringe of scant hair which circled his
rounded head.
The little Guardian tucked the abacus under his arm and drew himself up
to his full three-point-five cubits to launch himself into Angelo's
formidable face.
"I'll tell you what, Mr. Bigshot Avenging Angelo," Clarence went on.
"Guardians often have the resources to watch over half a dozen mortals.
What do I get? One. Easy, you say? Piece of angel food? Bah! My
assignment, bless her demented, grieving little heart, is a bona fide
fruitcake who requires my complete and unceasing attention." He
sniffed. "Stopping traffic befitted the occasion." '
Amused, interested, Kiel dropped his human form into the chair beside
Clarence's. "Stopping traffic?"
Scowling, Angelo explained. "Clarence, here, in order to delay one
mortal being, had traffic backed up on 1-70 for thirty miles"
"Thirty-two-point-six, to be precise," Clarence interrupted, adding,
"there didn't seem to be any other way of stopping her. I'm telling
you I was not acting outside my reasonable and customary powers."
Listening to the little Guardian piping up about his powers, Kiel could
still think of a lot less drastic solutions-flat tires, overheated
radiators, running out of gas that would have affected a single mortal
rather than hundreds of them. But the little Guardian was clearly at
his wits' end. "What's happening with your mortal?"
Clarence sighed. "She's a dear girl I'll say that right up front but
her husband died a year ago, and she's simply inconsolable. Can't say
as I blame her, actually." He whipped out his abacus again and set the
beads to crashing back and forth. "The odds against finding that kind
of happiness"
"Are astronomical, I'm sure," Angelo interrupted to forestall the
complex calculations.
"Exactly," Clarence said, aggrieved to be cut off so summarily from his
favorite occupation. "In fact, just this afternoon I popped a warning
bubble over Robyn's head citing the precise odds of getting away with
defying muggers, which she completely ignored."
Kiel didn't bother smothering his grin. This mortal-Guardian
assignment sounded like the mismatch of the ages. One for the
millenia.
"She jaywalks," Clarence hurried on. "She drives like a bat out of
you-know-where. She ignores common sense warnings, fights back when
she shouldn't - she got a terrible shiner this very afternoon Terrible,
I'm telling you."
Kiel's amusement faded. "You couldn't have prevented that?" Clarence
rolled his eyes. "If Guardians could prevent human beings from their
folly, we wouldn't need Avengers, now, would we? Mortals have their
free will, you know."
Kiel gave a shrug; Clarence was right.
"Now," he squeaked, racing on, "she's got it in her head that her
husband was murdered. If I didn't stop her, in a few hours she'd be in
Aspen asking questions." "And the problem with that would be what?"
Kiel asked. "Serious, that's what!" Clarence sputtered. "Pretty
soon, whoever killed her husband would have to kill her to shut her up.
You don't know Robyn. She won't quit. She'll end up getting herself
killed, and then I'll be answering to St. Peter." "Robyn, you said?"
Kiel asked. "Yes. Robyn Delaney Trueblood," Clarence supplied.
"And
I..."
Kiel straightened.
Clarence went on and on about quitting, giving up, throwing in the
towel, crying uncle, whatever it took to get out from under his
Guardian responsibilities to Robyn Delaney Trueblood. But Kiel had
tuned the Guardian Angel out.
Robyn... The name echoed through his being, stirring vaguely
recollected mortal sensations. He lifted his head and turned his
awareness inside himself as if trying to recall a favorite melody but
the images he sought were veiled and unfocused, somehow inaccessible.
He tried to shake off the frustration of knowing... and not knowing,
The Avenging Angels often worked under such limitations. His fellow
Avengers Sam and Dash even that cute little button of an angel,
Arie
l--had just been on assignments to restore order and justice. The
DBAA dockets were full, and it was often the' case that the Avenging
Angels assigned didn't know who the guilty party was. The Avengers
couldn't just swoop in, name the culprits and strike them down.
Instead, they had to work through mortals.
But this not knowing felt strangely personal to Kiel, as if in his
mortal existence he had known Robyn Delaney Trueblood .... Chapter
Two
"You have," Angelo muttered darkly, answering Kiel's unspoken
thought.
"Have what?" Kiel asked.
"Known Robyn Delaney."
"In the biblical sense?" Clarence squeaked, gaping at Kiel. "You mean
Ezekiel is Keller Trueblood?"
"Was Keller Trueblood," Angelo corrected him, projecting an image, like
a hologram, of Keller and his wife, Robyn, into thin air for both
Clarence and Kiel to see.
"Oh, my gracious sake's alive!" Clarence uttered, but Kiel could only
stare dumbfounded at the extraordinary lifelike projection. He didn't
recognize himself the mortal he was supposed to have been. Kiel's
earthly manifestations bore no physical resemblance to Keller
Trueblood's image, but the woman, Robyn, fired Kiel's heart. A strange
and foreign sensation poured through him.
Kiel's human manifestations didn't ever get too cold or overly hot. He
didn't shiver, sweat, sneeze or even leave footprints. He was an
unrepentant flirt, that was true, but if he'd ever had sexual congress
with a mortal, with Robyn, he didn't remember it. In fact he had no
recollections of a life here on earth before his assignment to the
DBAA.
But the still, silent apparition of Robyn Delaney, caught up in this
special dimension, mesmerized him, touched him deeply. Her hair was
black as cooled, gleaming lava, her complexion fair and fine as the
inside of a conch, and her rich brown eyes seemed to penetrate to the
molten core of him.
His very soul lightened and soared at the sight of her insubstantial
image. What was he supposed to do with such wonder and joy over an
earthbound woman?
He tried to bring his attention back to a more objective focus, to the
problem at hand. It had never before occurred to him to question where
his soul had most recently been. Recalling his fellow Avenging Angel
Dash's last assignment, Kiel had to wonder why he had no memory of a
mortal life or if it was true that Keller Trueblood had been
murdered.
"Didn't Dash and the mortal Liz Carradine just avenge Agatha Orben's
murder?" he asked.
Angelo nodded, making the projection of Keller Trueblood and Robyn
Delaney vanish. "Yes, but"
"And didn't Aggie arrive in heaven knowing she'd been murdered? Didn't
she go straight to St. Michael demanding justice?"
Angelo frowned. "Again, yes"
"Then why is it that I arrived not even knowing my mortal name?"
"These decisions," Angelo intoned, annoyed by these vestiges of Kiel's
prosecutorial cross-eXamination skills, "are made upstairs, so to
speak."
"Or else I fell through the cracks," Kiel muttered. "Well, this is all
very interesting," Clarence whined, stamping his foot at his inability
to get a word in edgewise, "but could we please get back to what you're
going to do about Robyn?"
"We'll take it from here," Angelo stated, waving the Guardian away. "Be
gone!"
To Kiel's amazement, the quirky, bean-counting little Guardian Clarence
stubbornly held his ground so as not to leave Robyn Delaney Trueblood
stranded without heavenly supervision.
"I want your word on that" Clarence demanded. "My word." Angelo burst
forth with a commanding demonstration of his fearsome angelic power.
Sparks flew. A brilliant light more powerful than a million candles
flashed. "My word?"
Clarence gulped. "I'll take that as a promise," he Croaked, popping
out before he could be commanded again to leave.
Angelo shook his-head. Guardians, Kiel knew, per2 formed a vital
function in the scheme of things, but they could be a real pain.
"About your mortal existence, Kiel." Angelo didn't wax philosophic
very often. Justice required decisiveness and action; in this
instance, he parted with his usual peremptory ways. "It's often the
case that the Heavenly Hosts wish to spare newcomers the anguish of
knowing they had an early and unanticipated end to their human lives.
It's true that Agatha Orben was murdered, but she had lived a long and
prosperous life. You, on the other hand, were in your prime."
Kiel nodded thoughtfully. Even now the image of Robyn Delaney
threatened his angelic equilibrium, made him wonder what it was to be
human and in love. In heaven, it went without question that to be
human was to be frail and needful. Vulnerable to grand and dark
passions alike.
"The fact is," Angelo went on, "I've never assigned a case quite like
this one. Your death... make that Keller's death, was a grave
injustice, but there was an even earlier injustice, too. Keller
Trueblood was prosecuting the murder of Spyder Nielsen when he died."
Angelo briefly outlined the facts of the case. "By dint of some cosmic
slip-up after Keller's death, that murder has gone unsolved and
unpunished, as well."
"Some cosmic slip-up?" Kiel demanded incredulously. "How do these
things happen?"
Angelo shrugged. "It's rare, but mistakes happen. Why, I can't
say."
"Can't say," Kiel asked, uncertain as to whether or not Angelo, in his
supervisory capacity, could be trusted to reveal the whole truth, "or
won't?"
"Can't," Angelo promised. "Kiel, you must understand what's at stake.
In all likelihood, loath as I am to admit it, Clarence is right. Robyn
Delaney will be in grave danger if she goes after the truth of Keller
Trueblood's death alone and then we'll really have a tangled mess of
injustices."
"So, I take the assignment," Kiel said, acting as if he was certain, to
make up for the fact that he wasn't so certain at all. "I don't
remember the first thing about being Keller Trueblood, so there
shouldn't be a problem."
Angelo looked up at Kiel from beneath his shaggy white eyebrows.
"Surely you can divine the possible complications .... You are the
angel of Robyn Delaney's husband. We're not talking any old marriage,
Kiel. It may have appeared ordinary, but Robyn and Keller were
soulmates. Their marriage was made in heaven. Two people in love for
all time. Robyn is inconsolable, and is destined to remain that way
for so long as she lives."
Untouched in his angelic trappings by such human emotions, Kiel had no
way of gauging the power of Robyn Delaney's feelings or the nature of
her loss. "Am I supposed to reveal to her that I am... that I was
Keller?"
The shelf of Angelo's white brows lowered. "That decision must be
yours. I should think it might deepen her despair to lose you again
when this case is resolved."
Kiel could see how dangerous it might be to Robyn
's peace of mind if
she knew, if despite all his precautions, she somehow came to know that
Kiel was the angelic incarnation of the soulmate she had known as
Keller Trueblood. To lose a soulmate twice in one lifetime... Kiel
shook his head. He could not in any conscience put her through that.
"Why bring me in on this case?" Kiel asked after a while. "There have
to be forty other halos around here who could avenge Trueblood's
death."
Angelo scowled. "We can't afford to lose whatever insight Keller
Trueblood possessed concerning the murder of Spyder Nielsen." He eyed
Kiel carefully. "Unless I'm very much mistaken, you are already
experiencing certain echoes of Keller's earthly experience as Robyn's
husband. Yes?"
Kiel gulped, so to speak. He began to see the stickier implications.
Angelo nodded. "There is a pinprick, now, in the vast reservoir of
Keller's memory. Hopefully, that will serve you well in avenging your
own death, as well as preventing Robyn's."
"Let me get this straight," Kiel said. "If I take this assignment, I'm
going to have greater and greater access to Trueblood's memory?"
Angelo shrugged. "We simply don't know. A case of an angel avenging
his own mortal death has never arisen before."
Kiel didn't know panic, except as an interesting phenomenon in humans,
but he thought what he was experiencing might now might qualify.
Already wary of his reactions to a mere image of Robyn Delaney, he
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