by Nana Malone
“Got to get back,” Azrael said. “I saw three people who could use my help.”
“Why do you do that?” Sam asked. “Reap the souls of the innocent?”
“Their bodies are failing.” Azrael adjusted the hated cloak so he wouldn’t zap the wrong person when he rematerialized back inside the Dagestani hospital. “Helping them leave without pain reminds me my gift has a purpose other than to kill bad guys.”
“For every evildoer you assassinate,” Sam said, reciting the ancient Cherubim meditation of the Shinobi Masters.
“You must grant redemption to ten good men,” Azrael finished. “Lest you lose your own soul to evil.”
“Wise people, those Cherubim,” Sam said. “Too bad there aren’t any of them around anymore.”
“The General teaches his Archangels their ways,” Azrael said. “Only since I can’t heal them, or interfere, all I can do is ease their passage into the Dreamtime.”
“Until next time,” Sam tucked his tail along his right side and giving Azrael a perfect Alliance salute.
Azrael teleported back to the Dagestani hospital, where Abdullah checked the pulse of the dead Chechens. The Sata’anic-hybrid looked up, not too surprised to see him.
“I sensed your presence when you entered the room, Malak al-Maut,” Abdullah said, making the Sata’anic sign of respect of hands to forehead, lips and heart. “It was my wish to create a diversion and enable these people to escape.”
As much as Mansur was more Dagestani than the Dagestan people, his brother Abdullah appeared to go to the opposite extreme. The imposition of the Russian educational system and values upon this populace had caused some, such as Mansur, to drift towards isolationism, while others such as Abdullah embraced modern values. Abdullah would not be out of place in a modern American hospital.
“What of these three?” Azrael pointed to the three ghastly pale patients the Agents had dumped on the floor without concern for the technology which kept them alive. Two were elderly. The third was the young woman Abdullah had shielded with his own body.
“Why don’t you ask them yourself?” Abdullah said. “Perhaps they are ready to leave? Perhaps not? It is their choice.”
The old woman waved Azrael away. Senile or not, she was not ready to leave. The man with emphysema, however, reached eagerly towards Azrael, the effort of merely lifting his hand causing him to gasp for breath.
“Take me please,” the old man said, “Angel of the Lord, to meet my Beloved Allah.”
“Peace be with you.” Azrael relished the feel of a mortal touching his hand willingly. It only lasted an instant, and then the physical sensation was gone, only the tickle of incorporeal consciousness brushing against his remaining as the old man's spirit was severed from his mortal shell.
“Thank you, Malak al-Maut.” The old man transformed into a younger, stronger man, his favorite physical form during his time on Earth. “Oh … I remember now. I’ve been here before. I’m supposed to wait for my wife at the entrance to the Dreamtime until she joins me.”
“Then I shall bring you there.”
Azrael transported the old man to the gateway and bid him farewell before teleporting back to the hospital. Abdullah kneeled over the young woman, who coughed up blood.
“Aisha is human,” Abdullah helped her sit up. “My mother’s second cousin. Dido clan. Not Hinukh as we are. My father married outside the tribe in the hopes of freeing his offspring from the curse of Shay’tan.”
“Had you not possessed a third fighting limb,” Azrael pointed out. “You would not have prevailed.”
“I prevailed because you reaped the souls of our enemies,” Abdullah said. “I only provided a distraction.”
Aisha stared, her eyes round at the sight of her cousin's long, striped tail and the black-winged Angel of Death standing in front of her. Abdullah answered her questions in one of the Tser-language dialects until the young woman appeared satisfied.
“Aisha has been kept in the dark about her aunt's heritage,” Abdullah said. “Our village is in a remote mountain pass. Our young do not understand the risk we take living so far from Jehoshaphat. Children forget to keep their tails hidden and there is no hiding their eyes until they are old enough to wear contact lenses.”
Aisha coughed, raising a handkerchief to her mouth to dab at the blood. Azrael could hear the odd crackling sound indicative of advanced tuberculosis, the wheeze of destroyed lung tissue, and the scent of decay with every exhalation she made. End-stage TB. Mycobacteria which ate the lung tissue until it was so scarred it could no longer filter oxygen. It ran rampant in this part of the world … and had developed resistance to all known antibiotics.
“Malak al-Maut has come to take me?” Aisha eyed Azrael with curiosity, but not fear.
“Only if you wish to be taken now,” Abdullah reassured her, his expression tender as he touched her cheek. “But I hoped something could still be done to save you.”
“You know there is no hope, Abdullah.” A smile lit up Aisha's skeletal features which had once been beautiful. “It’s time to let me go.”
Abdullah took her hand and pressed it to his cheek, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. Marriage amongst cousins was common in this part of the world, especially second-cousins. It was obvious Abdullah’s interest in Aisha was more than as her physician or relative.
“Mama always went home to visit her family and left us behind until we were responsible enough to hide our tails,” Abdullah explained to Azrael. “But now Aisha has seen me, and you, for what we are, isn’t there something you can do to heal her?”
“The other Archangels possess the gift to heal in varying degrees,” Azrael said regretfully. “But alas … I do not. The only gift I can offer Aisha is a painless end to her suffering if that is what she desires.”
“Grandpapa and great-grandmother beckon from the other side,” Aisha coughed up more blood. “I am not afraid.”
“I had hoped you would stay, vozlyublennyi [beloved],” Abdullah kissed her forehead, “and become my wife.”
“My body is too ill to bear your children,” Aisha gasped for breath until she finally caught it again. “This is a terrible way to die … to fight for each and every breath.”
“Perhaps if I take you to the West?” Abdullah said. “The doctors there might be able to cure you?”
“You tried every medicine the West has to offer,” Aisha sighed. “Do you think I do not know you bartered everything you own to purchase the medicine to heal me? My illness is Allah’s will.”
Outside, the rude intrusion of the Russian army storming the hospital interrupted their goodbye. Shouts erupted from the hallway as escaped hostages announced they were not Chechen rebels and surrendered. Azrael recognized one of the voices. Abu … Azrael had been charged with helping Abdullah find his way to Abu and making sure neither one of them got killed. At least the young man wouldn’t be facing an Agent.
“You’d best lay down on the floor so they don’t shoot you,” Azrael said; ready to fade the minute the Russian army kicked down the door.
Abdullah gathered Aisha’s emaciated mortal shell into his arms and protectively wrapped his tail around her body. His tribe had adopted the Sufi-Muslim customs of the Dagestani people. Although Dagestani women did not take the veil, Abdullah took a liberty only a betrothed dare take.
“I will go with you, then,” Abdullah kissed her hair. “Azrael can escort us together.”
“No,” Aisha said before Azrael, himself, was forced to refuse. He would not reap the souls of the healthy no matter how grief-stricken they were. “I wish for you to stay. Live your life. Find a healthy wife who can bear you many fine sons. Perhaps you could name one of your daughters in my memory?” She stroked the warm, striped tail which had curled around onto her lap. “So beautiful, your tail. I wish you’d felt confident enough to reveal it before Azrael come to take me.”
Tears streamed down Abdullah’s cheeks.
“Can I hold her while you take her?” Ab
dullah asked.
“It puts you at risk,” Azrael said. “But I sense you have enough Angelic DNA to sense her consciousness after she casts off her mortal shell.”
Shouts and the loud thud of boots attempting to kick down the door interrupted them. The Russian army was here.
“I am ready,” Aisha pushed Abdullah away. “It is great honor to have Malak al-Maut personally escort my soul into Paradise.”
“Come with me, then,” Azrael took her hand and gently kissed her forehead. The kiss of death. He relished the warmth of her flesh touching his as her life-energy was jolted from its mortal shell. Aisha’s hand slipped gracefully to the ground as her consciousness slid from her body.
Abdullah began to keen the high-pitched, ululating zaghareet Muslim people used to wail at the funerals of martyrs.
“There’s no pain?” Aisha rose to her feet and took the deep breaths denied to her in life. Her consciousness filled out so she lost her emaciated, sickly appearance, beautiful once more. “I must comfort my beloved.”
“Abdullah,” Azrael interrupted his mourning. “Please … close your eyes and focus. Aisha is still here. She wishes you to know she is well. I sense you can feel her.”
Hiccoughing, Abdullah rubbed his tears as he gathered Aisha’s empty mortal shell into his arms and did as Azrael said. It was difficult to concentrate with the sound of the battering ram bashing at the door.
“Goodbye, my love!” Aisha gave him the kiss she had never dared give him in life because to do so would have been her own tuberculosis-laden kiss of death. She lingered, her incorporeal lips touching Abdullah’s like a butterfly sipping nectar from a flower in the summer sun.
“I can feel her,” Abdullah reached out to touch the cheek he could not see. “I can’t see her … but I can feel her.”
“She is free from pain,” Azrael said. “But now I must go. I strongly suggest you hit the deck.”
The battering ram smashed through the door. Abu was the first to burst into the room, catching a glimpse of Azrael as he teleported Aisha to rejoin her ancestors in the Dreamtime. Abu leaped in front of the sobbing Abdullah, cradling the body of his deceased patient, just in time to prevent his Russian comrades from opening fire.
“He’s a doctor!!!” Abu shouted. “Don’t shoot!”
Over the next several days, Azrael monitored the Chechen rebels as they held a standoff with the Russian Army, hoping to capture the Agent who’d possessed Raduyev. All but 120 hostages were let go. They moved to a neighboring village. One-by-one, the Chechen rebels slipped away and faded into the hills. In the end, the Russians ended up killing more civilians than the Chechens did, as was usually the case in a Russian hostage crisis.
Azrael did not interfere further. Without Agents to reap, he had no legitimate reason for being there. He did, however, visit his favorite young research subject to silently cheer her on. Although the Armistice demanded he remain invisible and not interfere, he felt better when he checked in on her. The way she fought back against her own lousy circumstances gave him a helpful reminder that he wasn’t the only person who’d ever been on the crappy side of the toilet paper when it came to the intrigues of gods. Sometimes, it was enjoyable to watch people simply because you enjoyed watching the way they interacted with their environment.
So far, he’d collected reams of data about her.
* * * * *
Chapter 17
Thus Allah made them taste humiliation
In the life of the world,
And verily the doom of the Hereafter
Will be greater if they did but know.
Quran 39:26
Earth - AD June, 1996
Chicago, Illinois
“Elisabeth!!!” Nancy called. “Hurry up! You’re going to be late!”
“Coming!” thirteen-year-old Elisabeth shouted loud enough for her foster mother to hear. She scowled at her reflection in the mirror.
“As if anybody’s going to care if you show up or not,” the cripple who stared back at her from the mirror each day answered. Elisabeth stuck out her tongue and touched the glass, using her finger to trace the hideous scar which ran from her right temple, diagonally down her cheek, to the corner of her mouth. “Nobody loves a freak.”
Elisabeth reached for the two C-canes she used to get around, paused, and then put them back next to the bed.
“I’ll be damned if I’m going to walk up onto the stage in front of all my classmates using those ugly things!” she said to the image in the mirror. “You use them. I refuse.”
She stepped back, wobbling unsteadily, and reached for the cane Opa had been using the day he’d died. With no one left alive to care, the landlord had issued an eviction order and auctioned off her families' worldly goods to pay the creditors. There had been no money set aside. No life insurance. Not even a scrapbook full of pictures showing how happy her family had once been. Opa’s cane was the only tie Elisabeth had to a past that was gone forever.
“You can walk on stage with me, Opa,” Elisabeth said to the cane, feeling the worn smoothness of the curved wooden. “At least that way somebody will be there who gives a damn.”
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. HE was here again. He thought she was stupid, that she couldn’t see him. Well … she couldn’t. Not usually. But she knew he watched.
Although she rarely saw him, she always could sense his presence. Ever since the night she’d mistaken him for an angel, he’d watched her. Watched her struggle to stay alive. Watched her weep when she’d learned every person who’d ever given a rat's ass about her had died. Watched her fall on her face again and again as she relearned to walk. Watched her friends recoil from her injuries, the scar on her face, the wheelchair, the fact she could no longer run and play. Watched her get shuffled from foster home to foster home until, finally, Nancy had taken pity on her and applied to become her foster mother.
Nancy, the intensive care nurse whose face had been the second face she’d seen upon awakening in the intensive care unit of the hospital to discover her head was, quite literally, bolted to a steel frame to fix a broken neck. Nancy had reassured her she would be okay.
His face had been the first… Staring at her, his expression troubled, as though she were a puzzle he wished to figure out. In those early days she’d thought he was her friend, the black man who watched over her. Her angel. Come to heal her wounds and make everything go back to the way things were before.
But he had not healed her.
He had not made things go back to the way they were before.
He had not brought Mama and Papa and Franz, or Oma and Opa, back so she wouldn’t be all alone.
All he ever did was flit in and out of her life to watch. Sometimes, if she pretended to look the other way, like she did right now, and glanced in the mirror, she could catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye. Tall. Black-robed. Face hidden in the voluminous hood. Scribbling in a notebook as though she were a rat in a maze, constantly being put through her paces to see how long it would take her to find the piece of cheese.
“Go to hell,” Elisabeth hissed into the mirror, glancing in the direction she knew he stood even though she couldn't see him today.
She’d tried talking about the black man. To Nancy. To the never-ending parade of therapists the social workers made her talk to, trying to get her to ‘open up’ about her feelings about having had her entire family taken from her one Christmas Eve. They thought she was nuts. Imagining things. An imaginary friend her subconscious had manufactured to make sense of a senseless tragedy. It was the ultimate irony she’d been dressed as an angel the night God had taken her entire family from her.
She didn’t believe in God anymore…
She turned, staring in the direction she knew the black man stood. Watching her. If she stepped forward, for some reason he always stepped back. It was a game she played, making him retreat without letting him know she played it. She looked through where she knew he stood to the closet door behin
d him.
“It might get cold later,” Elisabeth said aloud. “I should bring a sweater.”
She lurched forward. Opa’s cane was a poor substitute for the two walking canes. Many times as she’d moved towards him she’d deliberately fallen, hoping he would catch her and show he possessed a scrap of compassion. But he never did. He always stepped back, allowing her to fall. Perhaps that was what he wrote about in that notebook? How pathetic it was to watch her fall?
She smirked as she sensed he’d stepped to one side, cramming his tall frame into the narrow slot between her bed and the wall.
“You never know when you’re going to be left out in the cold,” Elisabeth said aloud so that he would hear it. “It’s always good to be prepared.”
“Elisabeth!!!” Nancy shouted again. “C’mon! If we’re any later, they’ll send your commendation in the mail!”
“Coming!!!” Elisabeth shouted, grabbing the sweater and heading for the door. She held onto the rail and hobbled down the stairs, carefully placing the cane for balance so she didn’t go tumbling head over heels and break her neck. Elisabeth was no chicken, but having already broken her neck once in her lifetime, she had no desire to wake up a second time with bolts sticking out of her head like some modern-day Frankenstein.
They hobbled to the corner, where a city bus would take them to her middle school. Nancy did not earn enough to own a car; much less live in a better neighborhood. Pimps and street gangs lingered at the corner, eyeing them as Elisabeth balanced on her cane, but nobody bothered them. Not even the Saints or the Paulina Boys had any interest in rolling a cripple. She sat, staring emotionlessly out the window, as the bus made its way through traffic.
Numb. Elisabeth felt numb as she waited for the principal to call her name, oblivious to the reassuring hand Nancy planted on her forearm. She looked up at the smooth, vaulted ceiling of the auditorium and wondered where HE would sit to watch her get her award. She wished they’d held the ceremony in the gymnasium. At least there she could imagine HE might be there, perched amongst the support beams and raised basketball hoops.
