by Nana Malone
“And now I’d like to award our top eighth-grade student,” the principal boomed over the loudspeaker. “Elisabeth Kaiser.”
Elisabeth pushed herself up out of her seat and waved away Nancy’s offer to help as she got her balance. The auditorium grew silent as parents of her classmates realized she was a cripple. The natural acoustics of the auditorium amplified the clack-shuffle-clack of her cane as she hobbled across the stage.
“What’s wrong with her?” she overheard a parent ask.
Elisabeth stared across the sea of meaningless faces. Once upon a time she’d had many friends, but not since Death had marked her. Her classmates didn’t wish to be reminded fate could reach out and take everything away from them, as it had done to her, in an instant. Her hand tightened around the handle of Opa’s cane, the wood warm in her hand in a way the dual aluminum walking-canes with their plastic handles could never feel. She imagined it was Opa who reached out to shake her hand and let her know how proud he was of her for being the top student in her entire middle school.
His hand had been … cool. As though death itself resided in his touch. And yet … his face had been so kind. And familiar. As though he were an old friend. She hadn’t been afraid of him then, and she wasn’t afraid of him now. But sometimes, she wished he would just butt out and leave her alone.
She wondered if he watched her now…
Naw… She was daydreaming about angels again. Imaginary friends to alleviate the joke that was her life. Whoever he was, the black man was no angel. The only time she'd ever imagined he had wings was when he’d reached down and taken her hand, urging her to come with him.
Such beautiful, glossy black wings…
The audience politely clapped once or twice as she made her way off the stage then stopped. Nobody was there to see her. She was just the nerd they were forced to watch before they got to their own kids. Before she’d even made her way to the steps, the principal announced awards for the basketball students. The audience stood, cheering wildly, and began to root as jocks bounded victoriously onto the stage.
She sensed his presence as she reached the bottom step. She looked up, expecting to see him there, rewarding her for working her butt off studying instead of socializing with the friends she did not have. Her cane missed the bottom step. She jerked the arm which usually contained a second cane to compensate, but the hand was empty. She fell. Flat on her face. Nobody caught her, but she sensed him step back.
Her classmates began to laugh.
“All right, everybody,” the principal announced. “That’s enough!” He immediately went back to his speech lauding the jocks for winning the regional basketball championship. Elisabeth wasn’t sure whether to be relieved the principal did not highlight her humiliation further by stopping the ceremony, or be offended that helping a cripple was less important than praising the athletes with perfect bodies.
Nancy hurried from her spot somewhere mid-audience to help her to her feet. Elisabeth burst into tears of frustration.
“If you’re not going to help out,” Elisabeth said through teary eyes, “then just go away and leave me alone!”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Nancy said. “I warned you to use your regular canes.”
Elisabeth squelched the urge to snap ‘I wasn’t talking to you’ and glared at the spot where she sensed he stood. The black man who liked to watch her fall.
She hated that black man.
Elisabeth resolved that, from now on, she would do everything in her power to defeat him…
* * * * *
Chapter 18
Fear not them which kill the body,
But are not able to kill the soul:
But rather fear him which is able to destroy
Both soul and body in hell.
Matthew 10:28
Earth - AD August 6, 1998
Iganga, Uganda
Lucifer’s current chief intelligence officer was one of many he’d worked with over the centuries. Taller than an average human, well-built, dark-skinned and strong, Samuel Adams had inherited the trait which cursed all descendants of the Sata'an-Fallen to serve Lucifer. So long as a hybrid bore a tail, the Armistice decreed they were subject to the Curse of Shay'tan, the old dragon's revenge upon ancestors who had sided with the Fallen.
“What are we looking for?” Azrael asked.
“We've received intelligence Agents of Moloch are planning an offensive against a major target in Uganda,” Sam said. “But we haven’t been able to isolate the target.”
“A lot of help that does us!” Major Hayyel gave Sam a contemptuous look. "Couldn't you have narrowed it down a little?"
Major Hayyel was the latest mortal Observer assigned from Ceres Station to perform Azrael's old job. Like most Angelics, Hayyel bore the white wings, blonde hair and fair complexion of the Emperor's genetic tinkering. Although every few years the Regent managed to elevate a new archangel, the overwhelming majority of Hashem's armies remained mortal soldiers, just like Azrael had once been.
Sam shrugged off Hayyel's rudeness and focused his attention on the Iganga skyline. Sam was used to being treated as a second-class human, but it still made Azrael bristle. While the two emperors' armies lived in comfort on Ceres Station, doing 99.9% of their so-called ‘intelligence gathering’ via remote satellite and drone, Sata’an-human hybrids rolled up their sleeves and waded through the shit humanity generated without complaint.
“Do you have any prospects?” Azrael asked.
“My bet is on the American or British embassy,” Sam said. “Those are the two hottest targets.”
“Does it even matter,” Hayyel's lip curled. “These petty kingdoms on this backwards planet?”
“Uganda has taken important steps towards democracy since they overthrew Idi Amin,” Azrael said. “It’s only natural the old guard would target supporters of the new.”
“The chatter has been against both targets, Sir,” Sam closed his clear inner eyelid to keep out the African dust instead of blinking using both sets of eyelids to appear human. “But if I had to pick one, I’d say they’re planning on hitting the Americans.
“So where are the bad guys?” Hayyel cringed at Sam's lizard-like gesture. “So I can get the hell off this shithole of a prison world?”
“We’re forbidden to interfere unless it’s a direct effort to free Moloch,” Azrael reminded Hayyel. “He's been recruiting disenfranchised Muslims, riling them up to make human sacrifices under the guise of suicide bombings. My bet is the attack will come from humans connected with that movement.”
“If you already know who they are and why they’re causing trouble,” Hayyel gave Azrael an accusatory stare, “then why do you waste my time?” Like most soldiers stationed in the most remote sector of the galaxy under complete radio silence, Hayyel resented being here.
“Because the terms of the Armistice say the two emperors have a right to appoint a mortal observer, that's why.” Azrael gave Hayyel a patronizing grin. “Lucky you. You get to babysit the unicorn planet.”
He didn’t add that the lengthy debriefing all Observers underwent after each return from Earth was, in fact, an examination to ensure the Observer hadn’t become infected with a squatter. All those times Azrael had thought Major Skgrll had locked him in a room and grilled him because he thought him incompetent … well, actually Skgrll had thought he was incompetent … but the Spiderid commanding officer had also been using monitoring equipment to register the subtle spikes in energy that occurred whenever an Agent overrode an unwilling hosts natural inclinations. Equipment that was, in Azrael’s case, unnecessary since now he just knew when he was dealing with a squatter.
“Our men are scanning the embassies in Kampala disguised as electrical workers,” Sam said. “We’ve got them searching for explosives or chemical weapons as we speak.”
“More likely it’ll be a car bomb,” Azrael said. “That seems to be their M.O. lately.”
“We’ve got feelers out for suspicious purchases,” Sam said
. “But if they’re buying anything, its components that are innocuous in their original form. Either that or they’ve found a source we haven’t infiltrated.”
“What are we looking for, then?” Hayyel asked.
“A covered vehicle,” Sam said. “Most likely a truck. Bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. And some sort of ignition source. C4 or TNT is the best, but propane cylinders also work. There are liquid propane tanks hooked up to every house in this town.”
“That’s not very helpful.” Hayyel looked down from the roof of the three-story brick building they perched upon now, the tallest in the area, at the dozens of box trucks, covered pickup trucks with caps, and busses parked or driving through the light traffic of the town. “What would they even hit here? Talk about the boonies!”
“Not here,” Sam said. “Our intelligence indicates this is where the Agents are staging the attack. We believe they’re heading to Kampala where the embassies are.”
“So we’re looking for a needle in a haystack,” Hayyel said. “And we’re forbidden to fly over the city lest the primitives see us.”
“We’re descended from these primitives, Sir.” Azrael pointed to a speckling of bronze feathers, indicative the Emperor had reinfused Hayyel's bloodline with human DNA within the last few generations to stave off inbreeding. “Even the Regent was once a human.”
Anger flared in Hayyel’s eyes. Azrael noted the subtle way Hayyel twitched his wings in the opposite direction. In the eyes of most mortal Angelics, Azrael was even more of an abomination than the Sata'anic Fallen. That ever-present hunger grew worse as Azrael felt a sensation akin to being kicked in the stomach.
His hand tingled. The hand that could feel physical sensation ever since the night Elisabeth had touched him and survived. Azrael looked at his fingers, imagining the way her small hand had curled around his as she’d told him she was the Angel of the Lord. She was even more alone than he was. He would check in on her the moment they were done.
“You can’t fly without being seen,” Azrael said. “Being non-corporeal has its advantages.”
Azrael felt a thrill of perverse satisfaction at the expression of fear on Hayyel’s face when he suddenly transformed from an otherwise normal-appearing Angelic, other than his ebony visage and heavy shielded cloak, to a creature of the void. He was tired of being treated like a second-hand citizen by his own species. Former species. Was he even still an Angelic? Nobody knew for sure. It was a rhetorical question.
‘Now I know how Lucifer feels,’ Azrael thought, noting his unusual urge to deliberately irk someone.
While Azrael glided invisibly down side streets like a wraith, stopping at any house that appeared suspicious, Sam pretended to be a farmer selling plantains, blending in with the general population with his African complexion and flawless Bantu dialect. Except for his trench coat that appeared out of place in the African heat, Sam could have passed for one of the tall, chocolate-skinned Baganda tribe. Intermarriage with humans had diluted most Sata’an traits enough for the lizard-people to commingle with only a light disguise, but all Moloch’s agents had to do was peek under the hood for a tail and the hybrids would be made.
“Observer, this is Brewer,” Sam called into the Alliance communications device which had been disguised to look like a cell phone. “Possible suspect in the outbuilding behind the Noor Islamic Primary School. White box truck, portable liquid propane cylinders, bags of fertilizer and sandbags. Request backup.”
“Brewer, this is Observer,” Hayyel answered. “I’m on my way.”
“Az … we need you,” Sam added.
Azrael did not answer. Although the Emperor had crafted a radio sufficiently shielded to passively monitor a frequency without shorting out, he couldn’t touch the push-to-talk button without ‘killing’ it the same way he jolted mortal consciousnesses out of their bodies. Sam had worked with him long enough to trust he’d come. He raced along red dirt roads to the outbuilding abutting the railroad tracks providing a lifeline for the town.
“Shay’tan’s foot!” Azrael hissed, spotting the thatched-roof garage halfway between the primary school and Victoria High School. “There are children everywhere!”
Nearly two hundred elementary-aged children ran around the tightly-packed school in their bright green school uniforms. Most African schools were taught in open-air classrooms consisting of little more than a roof to shield them from sun unless severe weather drove them indoors. Behind the more formal concrete walls of adjacent Victoria High School came the sound of older students diligently reciting their lessons.
“How many more inside?” Hayyel pointed to the three men nonchalantly filling sandbags and carrying them over to load in a U-shaped design inside an empty truck.
“Besides those three,” Sam said, “I counted two inside the outbuilding tinkering with a detonation device. There was a third one, but one of the kids came to fetch him to the high school to fix a clogged toilet.”
“Probably the janitor,” Azrael said. “As caretaker of the property, no one would question workmen loading supplies in the maintenance barn.”
“A janitor?” Hayyel asked, contempt bleeding into his voice.
“Don’t knock the janitor.” Azrael's annoyance got the better of him. “He’s in a position of trust with a secure government job and a pension. Economic security very few Africans enjoy. Kind of the human equivalent of being a Major assigned to monitor a remote outpost.”
Anger flashed in Hayyel’s eyes. Azrael made a mental note to cut Lucifer a little slack the next time he saw him.
“The sandbags will direct the blast in a desired direction,” Sam said. “If I had to hazard a guess, they don’t intend for this to be a suicide bombing. It will take a few moments once they reach their target to activate the first gas canister to explode. Enough time to run away and detonate it remotely.”
“What about the children?” Hayyel pointed to the kids playing perilously close to the building. “If we jump them and they detonate that thing here, anyone outside will be killed.”
“We’ve been seeing a lot of this lately,” Sam said. “Moloch’s agents work close to targets we’d be reluctant to raid. Not only could innocent civilians be killed, but they know we’re not supposed to allow humans to know we’re watching.”
“We got activity!” Azrael pointed to a second truck that pulled into the narrow dirt driveway. Two more men got out and began unloading bags of ammonium nitrate from the second truck against the sandbags in the first. Ammonium nitrate was a common fertilizer all over the world … and also a component of most Earth explosives…
“Looks like we found the right place,” Hayyel peered through a pair of binoculars.
The janitor, returning from the high school, spotted Hayyel’s large, white wings. He began to shout.
“Hit the deck!” Azrael warned. “We’ve been made!”
The men in the outbuilding erupted like angry ants defending their hive, leaping behind bags of fertilizer and pulling out guns. Their suspicions were now confirmed.
“Shit!” Sam cried out, grabbing at his shoulder as he hit the ground. “I’ve been hit!” The lizard-man twisted around, his tail streaming out of the split tails of his Australian over-drovers coat for balance, and shot the janitor in the heart.
The kids screamed and ran in the other direction.
Hayyel leaped into the air, pulse rifle drawn, and headed for the five men shooting at them from the fertilizer-laden box truck. Two men came from inside the outbuilding, dragging a grill-sized gas canister laden with wires behind them.
“Watch out!!!” Azrael shouted.
Agents were disembodied consciousnesses that 'squatted' in the mortal shells they’d seized like a tapeworm or a tick. The shells they inhabited were expendable so long as another potential host lay close enough for them to jump ship, otherwise they risked getting sucked back into the fires of Gehenna by the very portal they had just opened. Hundreds of potential vessels milled about, screaming.
&nb
sp; “Molechku akhbar!” The two aimed the detonation device towards the truck where Hayyel was about to land.
“The children,” Sam shouted. He pointed at several who’d frozen in the playground, too terrified to do anything but cry. A brave teacher rushed forward to herd them to safety. They were all within blast range.
Hayyel would be blown to pieces, a wound a mortal Angelic might not survive.
The children would definitely die.
One Angelic.
Three children. And a teacher. Four.
The canister exploded as it rolled beneath the wheels, detonating the slower-exploding bags of fertilizer piled into the truck above and around it.
Azrael made his choice. Wings erupted from the hated black cape as he flung it off and teleported himself between the children and the explosion. Shrapnel headed in all directions. Azrael flared his wings to their full wingspan, creating a barrier between the bomb and hapless children.
The children screamed in terror at the sight of the Angel of Death standing before them, his physical appearance slipping as he concentrated on the more important task of shielding civilians from the explosion. Matter hit the back of his wings and dissolved, the energy, the motion, the very molecules and atoms which held the chunks of shrapnel and expanding gasses together simply dissipating into primordial nothingness the moment they collided with his non-corporeal form.
“I won’t hurt you,” Azrael said. “But do not touch me, for my touch is death.” He stepped back, wings spread wide to provide cover for stray gunfire or after-explosions.
“Please,” Azrael gestured to the teacher. “You must get them to safety.”
The teacher hurried forward, her face filled with both determination and fear as she stepped between him and her students and herded them back towards the building. She didn’t even thank him…
