by Nana Malone
Azrael moved before the man huddled on the curb so he would be visible when he rematerialized, checked to make sure nobody was within range of his wings, and extended them just enough so the man would know what creature stood before him now. He pushed back his hood and solidified his physical form just enough so someone in an altered state of grief might perceive him.
“Listen,” Azrael said softly to the man who sat with his face in his hands, weeping. “There’s a little girl still trapped inside that car. She is dying. It’s too late to help her family, but it’s not too late to help her. Even if she doesn’t make it, at least you can make sure she doesn’t die alone. This accident was not your fault.”
The truck driver looked up, blinked and hastily wiped at his eyes as he recognized the Angel of Death stood before him, black wings, black flesh, black cloak, and the kindest, most beautiful face he had ever seen. He reached towards him.
“Don’t touch me,” Azrael warned. “My touch is death. I need you to make the others listen. You need to make them search the car one more time. She’s trapped in the front seat between her dead parents.”
“O-o-o-okay,” the truck driver stuttered, placing one hand behind him to lurch shakily to his feet.
Azrael stepped back and dissipated his physical form so he was impossible to see. Only another ascended being or genetically evolved human could see him in this state. The truck driver blinked and looked around.
“Hey…” the truck driver asked. “Where’d he go?”
“You should sit down, sir,” a female police officer said, one of the new arrivals. “You have a concussion.”
“There’s someone in the car.”
“We know, Sir,” the female police officer said gently. “There isn’t anything we can do for them. We need to make sure you aren’t lost as well.”
“No,” the truck driver pushed past her and moved back towards the car. “The angel. He said there’s a little girl trapped in the car. In the front seat. Between her dead parents. We need to help her.”
The female officer hesitated, unsure what to do. Not that she believed in angels, but a lifetime of seeing wacky things happen while out on patrol inclined her to not just discount the claim of a witness.
“Hey … Fred!” she called. “He said there’s another victim in the car. Still alive.”
“We checked already,” the first police officer on the scene said. “No pulses. They’re all dead.”
“Was there a little girl? In the front seat between the parents?”
“No,” Officer Fred glanced in and grimaced at the gruesome scene. “I see nothing.”
“The angel said there’s a little girl trapped in the car and she’s going to die if we don’t help her,” the truck driver shouted, pushing past Officer Fred and rushing to the window of the car. “Little girl? Are you okay?”
Not a sound. Not even a whimper. Not even for Azrael’s sensitive hearing. It was as though her consciousness had completely disappeared. Invisible. Even to him.
“You’re distraught, Sir.” Officer Fred placed his hand on the truck driver's shoulder. “And you’ve been badly injured. There’s no little girl in there. See?”
“The angel said she’s in there and I’m going to get her out,” the truck driver shoved off the police officer’s hand and grabbed the mangled handle of the car door. “Little girl! Little girl! Can you hear me? We’re coming for you!”
“Sir?” Officer Fred called over to the other police officers. “I need backup here. This guy’s going off the deep end.”
The truck driver fruitlessly yanked the mangled door, trying to force the tangle of steel to open. It wouldn’t budge.
Azrael shifted into his more versatile void-creature form and ran a tentacle along the door. The metal dissolved beneath his touch as though it were being cut by a blow torch, only unlike a welder’s torch, his touch left no melted iron in its wake, only a clean line where matter had once existed and now did not. Metal groaned in protest as the door came off the hinges. The truck driver fell backwards onto the snow, door and all, upon his back. The bloodied, mangled mass of what had once been a human female fell out, making a sickening ‘plop’ as it hit the snowy pavement.
With a tiny tinkling sound, a small golden halo fell out on top of the bloody mess, the tinsel shining brightly in the flashing blue police lights.
“Oh my god,” Officer Fred glanced into the mangled interior of the car. “He’s right. There is someone else in there.”
The truck driver began to weep, but this time it wasn’t guilt that made him cry, but the intense emotion of knowing he’d been right.
“It wasn’t my fault!” the truck driver cried aloud, reaching towards the sky. “The angel said it wasn’t my fault.”
Azrael made a mental note to come back and study the truck driver’s reaction as soon as he’d cleaned up this mess. Activity exploded around him as the police shoved back the onlookers, giving the paramedics room to extricate the unconscious child from the wreckage.
“Her pulse is weak,” the paramedic said, gently laying her out upon the ground. “Very erratic. I don’t know how she’s still alive.”
“Look at her neck,” the second paramedic said. “It looks … broken. Hey … Janice! Get the backboard!”
The female officer rushed over to the ambulance and came running back with the backboard. “Here.”
“We got a Caucasian female,” the first paramedic called into the radio pinned to his shoulder. “Neck appears to be broken. Both arms … broken. Both legs … broken. Pelvis … broken.”
“Lung appears to be punctured,” the second paramedic called, slipping an oxygen mask over her face. “At least seven broken ribs. We got a lot of blood here. I think we’ve got a punctured brachial artery.”
“Blood pressure is barely readable,” the first paramedic said. “How is this kid even still alive?”
Yes. How was this child still alive? Normally the consciousness would be knocked loose from the mortal shell, trying to escape the pain. A tendril of consciousness would tether the spirit until it decided whether to stay, or go. This child, however, was firmly entrenched in her body and refusing to budge. It was how he’d missed her in the first place.
He hadn’t seen a consciousness cling so fervently to its mortal shell since the day Agent-infested Romans had nailed Yeshua to a cross and publicly executed him…
Azrael solidified his physical form to appear ‘normal’ and pulled his black cloak around himself before stepping forward to get a closer look. The child lay there, only a stray golden curl indicating her coloring amongst the blood matting her hair to her head. Splayed beneath her, fake dime-store angel wings were affixed to her back, covered in blood. His awareness of the chaos which bustled around him retreated as his nostrils flared, listening for signs of whether this child would live or if he should alleviate her suffering.
“There’s no way this kid is going to make it,” one of the paramedics said. “I’ve never seen injuries this severe.”
Her eyes slid open. Unearthly silver eyes, so pale they glistened like the moon, met his. Despite her pain, the little girl smiled. She reached towards him like an infant reaching towards a bauble, delighted by its spin. She wished for him to end her suffering. Azrael reached over the bustling paramedics to take her hand.
“I see you…” the little girl chimed. Her small hand closed trustingly around his.
Warmth flooded his hand as her life force flowed straight up into his heart, making it skip a beat in a way it hadn’t done since he’d been rendered without form. The perpetual song that always played in the background of his consciousness grew louder, other instruments joining the cello in a symphony of joy, making him choke with emotion. Azrael tugged, wishing to carry her away from her pain, but she did not follow. His black eyes grew wide with surprise as, for the first time since the day he’d become a creature of the void, a mortal touched him and lived.
“Wh-wh-who…” Azrael stuttered. “Who are you?�
�
“I’m the Angel of the Lord, silly!” The little girl's eyes glowed silver as she gave him a weak smile. “You can't start without me.”
Her eyes slid shut.
Azrael felt panic out of fear he’d lost her, but her consciousness still clung to her mortal shell, refusing to so much as peek a single tendril out of the body the child refused to abandon, so formidable was her will to live.
No wonder he hadn’t detected her consciousness…
Azrael stood like some tall, dumb statue of an angel and trailed behind the paramedics as they lifted the broken child, bloodied wings and all, onto a stretcher and wheeled her over to the ambulance. Who was this child?
As the ambulance sped away, Azrael looked over to where the truck driver had stopped to pick up the bloody halo the little girl had worn upon her head. The halo which had dropped out when he’d torn the door off the hinges with a little help from Azrael. The man was on his knees, hands clasped together in prayer, weeping with joy.
“Um … would you mind if I … um … took … that?” Azrael pointed to the halo.
The truck driver looked at him through tear-stained eyes and shakily extended his hand. Azrael took the fragile halo between his forefinger and thumb so as not to accidentally dissolve it or brush the fingers of the mortal who was as perplexed by what had just happened as the Angel of Death was.
“It really wasn’t my fault, was it?"
“No,” Azrael said. “It wasn’t.”
Leaping into the air, Azrael flapped his great black wings and sped after the ambulance.
* * * * *
Chapter 14
Then I saw another angel
Come up from where the sun rises in the east,
And he was ready to put the mark
Of the living God on people.
He shouted to the four angels,
"…Wait until I have marked the foreheads
Of the servants of our God."
Revelation 7:2-3
Earth - AD December, 1992
Chicago, Illinois
Azrael felt their presence. He peeked out the doorway of the hospital room, where the little girl who’d just defied death lay hooked up to every piece of medical equipment currently known to humankind, before signaling the coast was clear. Not only were the doctors scratching their heads wondering how the child was still alive, but so was Azrael.
“Who is she?” Azrael stared down at the cheap tinsel halo he still held in his hand.
“We don’t know,” the General said. “Not only does Hashem not know, but She-who-is doesn’t know either. If she’s a recycled consciousness, she didn’t come from the Dreamtime.”
“Is she one of yours?” Azrael gave Lucifer a pointed look. He knew enough about Lucifer’s ‘power of persuasion’ to not assume the mother’s marriage to another human at the time of the child’s conception disqualified the Fallen Angelic from being the sire.
“I wish,” Lucifer stared down at the child. “She looks like one of mine. But I have no recollection of servicing her mother.”
The General snorted with disgust.
“We all know how reliable your memory is!” A scornful expression caused the General's unearthly blue eyes to glow even bluer with a hint of the Cherubim energies he wielded.
“Hey!” Lucifer protested. “I haven’t had a blackout for 5,500 years. It’s not my fault Moloch got his hands on me as a teenager!”
“Hmpf!” The General's arms crossed across his powerfully muscled chest to indicate his closed mind.
Azrael noted the exchange with detached interest, making a mental note to track data on the ongoing hostility between the two Archangels in the expanding file of scientific theories he used to occupy his mind whenever he wasn’t busy reaping Agents of Moloch.
“Is she a step-in from a higher realm?” Lucifer asked. He moved to the child’s bedside and took her hand.
“Nobody knows,” the General did the same. “Perhaps?”
Physical touch. How Azrael envied them. The feel of the child’s hand in his; the sensation of warmth as she’d touched him, but refused to allow her consciousness to become severed from her body, made his hand tingle even now as though it were alive.
Azrael glanced down at his hand, the one that was a figment of his imagination. Not real. An artificial construct shaped by his consciousness so the mortals of this realm wouldn't run screaming every time they saw him. It didn’t look any different than it normally did, but it sure felt different. He felt different. As though the child had somehow transferred a tiny portion of her … being … to him?
Was that even possible? Should he ask the General to mention it to the Emperor? No. The experience had merely shaken him. He was too unimportant to waste the Emperor’s time, especially now that She-who-is had put Hashem in charge of manipulating life forms and prodding them towards evolution in other galaxies besides this one. At the moment, Shay’tan was essentially in charge of the Milky Way.
The two Archangels closed their eyes and focused, giving the little girl what Azrael could not, the gift of healing. It humbled him that the two enemies had come together to heal this child simply because he had asked them to. A look of peace came upon the General’s face as he focused on the Song of Creation. Tears rolled down Lucifer’s cheeks as the Song enabled him to feel the connection which still existed with the mate he had lost.
The heart monitor evened out. The little girl's coloring improved. Bruises faded.
“We must stop.” The General released her hand and placed it gently back upon the covers. “She’s already a miracle child. We must leave some infirmary in place to mark her struggle.”
“Please,” Azrael begged. “She’s still in pain. She’s just a little girl.”
“You allowed one amongst them to see you,” the General chastised. “News of this story is already being circulated in the media as a Christmas miracle. If she survived your touch, she may be evolved enough to be a host. Exposure puts her at risk of drawing Moloch’s attention.”
“She’s a child who just lost her entire family!” Lucifer argued. “She’ll struggle enough without physical limitations exacerbating her problems.”
“We cannot give definitive proof of our existence,” the General warned. “They must continue to evolve naturally. If we push them any faster, we’ll inhibit the very traits the gods wish to foster.”
“Just a little more?” Lucifer looked at his adversary through tear-stained eyes. “Please. Her spine is still damaged. If we leave scars, at least leave her with ones that won’t prevent her from making her own way through this world. You, better than anyone, should understand how hard it can be to live amongst the humans.”
It never ceased to amaze Azrael that, despite all of Lucifer’s significant shortcomings, for some reason he’d inherited an almost human capacity to experience empathy, including compassion and hatred; conflicting moral codes that left even the studious Azrael constantly perplexed. Little did Lucifer realize his stoic Seraphim adversary was little different than he was in his capacity to feel, only less outwardly expressive thanks to his early years being reared by the Cherubim.
“Sir?” Azrael pleaded, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled the scent of pheromones that remained out of balance. “Please.”
He wasn’t supposed to interfere in the life-choices of mortals, but this child had made it clear by the way she clung to her mortal shell that she wished to live. Would it be wrong to make sure she didn’t live as a quadriplegic? His ears heard the painful wheeze of lungs where they’d been punctured and constrictions where blood couldn’t flow due to permanent physical injuries. Although the two had reconnected the severed nerves in her broken neck, she’d still spend the rest of her life disabled.
“She sure looks like one of mine,” Lucifer caressed the child’s cheek. “Perhaps she’ll be the one who sets me free?”
The General relented, and not simply out of his desire to be rid of Lucifer once and for all. The General had earned his
nickname, Angel of Mercy. Beneath his stoic exterior lay a compassionate creature with a heart of gold.
“We shall focus on the injuries which would impede her progress through this world,” the General said. “Leaving ones likely to heal through natural forces over a period of time. And a scar. There. That gash on her face. We’ll leave her with a visible reminder she shouldn’t be alive.”
“It’s not right to disfigure her!” Lucifer protested.
“It’s not to punish her,” the General said. “But a reminder this child defeated the Angel of Death. As –I- choose to keep a scar over my heart to remind me how blessed I am to have found my true mate.”
Lucifer looked away, shame filling his eyes. The General referred to the scar where the then Moloch-possessed Lucifer had used his ‘power of persuasion’ to induce a disturbed young woman to plunge a venomous blade into Mikhail’s heart, the source of the General's hatred. An unhealable wound only a life-mate wielding the Song of Ki could heal. A physical and emotional bond Azrael could never, ever form, because to merely brush against him meant death.
The General and Lucifer touched the child once more, the energy in the room shifting and vibrating to the song all three of them could hear thanks to their connection to Ki.
“There,” the General said. “It is done. She’ll struggle just long enough to cause doubt it was divine intervention which saved her.”
Lucifer brushed a curl out of the child’s eye before gently kissing her on the forehead. “Maybe she’s a descendant? It’s not often I get to interact with the children I sire.” He paused, looking at his old adversary with rare vulnerability in his eyes. “Perhaps Azrael is right. I should set a better example?”
