by Nana Malone
“O death, where is thy sting?” Tommy sang, the boy next to him dragging him down into the bass clef. “O grave! Where is thy victory?”
“The sting of death is sin,” Elisabeth pointed to the correct notes on Tommy’s sheet music and leaned close to his ear so he could hear her sing the correct notes. “And the strength of sin is the law.”
His raven-black hair tickled her nose as he came back on-key, his aftershave obfuscating any scent he may have had. An overwhelming urge to sneeze nearly overcame her, forcing her to lean back into her own space.
Elisabeth glanced out into the audience. She ‘d been so caught up in daydreams of college and Tommy Rodriguez lately that she hadn’t given much thought to her imaginary black man. Sometimes … not only did she imagine she felt him, but whenever she thought he was there, it smelled faintly of the ocean, a clean, slightly briny scent, brimming with life. The way her sweater had appeared neatly arranged on her bed and the voice on the bus today had reminded her of her imaginary watcher.
Was he here? Her black man? Waiting for her to fall and make an ass of herself so he could write about how clumsy she was in that notebook he always had with him? She never saw him anymore. Not since she was a little girl. But more and more she sensed he was in the room, still watching even though memory of what he looked like had long ago faded.
She was determined that nothing on heaven or earth would make her fall in front of him. Ever. Again. Maybe the therapist she’d finally refused to see anymore was right? There was no black man.
“Alleluia. Alleluia,” Elisabeth sang. She held the final alto note, or tenor depending upon whether you were a girl or a boy, as she glanced over to see what Tommy was doing. "Alle-lu-ia.”
The audience clapped. Elisabeth bent to pick up the cane she’d carefully placed behind her feet before singing. After years of trying to walk without it, she’d finally made her peace with it..
“Let me get that for you,” Tommy gave her one of his heart-melting smiles that had every girl in the school swooning.
“Thanks…” Elisabeth's heart did a flip-flop as butterflies tried to escape her stomach.
“Allow me?”
Tommy put out one arm to assist her as she stepped down from the bleachers. When he did it, he appeared to be a gentleman escorting a lady. Not some chaperone assigned by the school as had been the case immediately after her accident. Of course, Tommy didn’t look like a chaperone, his tight butt looking mighty fine in the black dress chino’s his mother must have borrowed from a relative for tonight’s concert. Elisabeth felt like she was floating on air as he escorted her up the aisle to meet up with Nancy.
‘Cookies…’ Nancy mouthed the words as they approached, making a small circle with the fingers of one hand while she pantomimed drinking tea with the other. ‘Remember to invite him to come for cookies.’
“Uh … Tommy,” Elisabeth's cheeks turned as red as the outdated 1980’s dress she wore. “My … um …Nancy? She … um … wanted to know if you’d … um … want to stop by for … um … cookies? Tomorrow?”
“Sure!” Tommy gave her that sunny grin that made her knees feel like they were about to give out. He raised his thumb and forefinger to his ear as though it were a telephone. “I’ll call you.”
Elisabeth nearly swooned as he disappeared up the aisle after his friends. The Latin Kings had come out in force tonight to see Tommy sing, his stint in the high school chorus penance for graffiti the music teacher had bagged him spray painting on the side of the building. Tommy liked to sing. It’s just that his usual venue was a street corner rapping with his friends and dancing fancy hip-hop routines for change in a bucket.
“He said yes!” Elisabeth squealed the moment he was out of earshot.
“Told you the way to men's hearts is through their stomachs,” Nancy said. “They make a big deal about wanting some hot babe. But the one they really want to come home to is the gal with a good head on her shoulders and a decent supper on the table.”
Elisabeth was silent as they moved towards West Armitage Avenue to catch the bus. Nancy had been through a rough childhood, first with gangs, then with drugs and being kicked out at sixteen to make her own way in the world. Nancy had never told her why it had taken her so long to get approved as a foster parent, but word on the street was Nancy had started turning tricks to support her heroin addiction before getting sent to juvie to straighten out her life. She loved her foster mother dearly, but Elisabeth took her dating advice with a grain of salt.
“Hey … Elisabeth!” Tommy called from where he also waited for the bus, surrounded by his ‘homies.’ “Come meet my friends.”
Nancy looked apprehensive. Although her reservations about Tommy had lessened, the kids hanging off his every word dealt drugs. If there was one thing Elisabeth did trust Nancy’s judgment on, it was avoiding tweakers.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Nancy tugged her in the other direction. “Tommy’s okay. The choir director said he’s going to graduate unless he really screws up. But the others? They’re Latin Kings. They don’t even go to school here anymore.”
“They dropped out,” Elisabeth broke Nancy’s grip. “But they’re his friends. You’re always telling me it’s not fair to judge a book by its cover.”
“Just one minute,” Nancy didn't looking convinced. “And then we’ve got a bus to catch. We promised Mrs. Schroeder you’d come over for date-nut bread and some tea after the concert so she can get a picture of you in that dress wearing her best shoes.”
“I’ll be fine.” Nancy’s reservations were already forgotten as she made her way over to Tommy, minding her step so she didn’t fall on her face in front of his friends.
“Elisabeth … meet my homies," Tommy preened. "Guys … this is Elisabeth … guardian angel of the Lincoln Park chorus.” He now wore the mask of a too-cool homie. The not-quite gang kid. Talented enough with his rap music and hip-hop dance that even his gang friends were rooting for him to get the hell out of this shithole of a city and make something of his life.
“She don’t look like no guardian angel,” a Hispanic female with blue lipstick and long, blue painted fingernails stepped in front of Tommy with her arms crossed. “Not in that red dress of hers.”
Two other Hispanic females dressed like colorful exotic birds closed ranks on either side. Standing firm with their BFF against the intruder.
“It’s so … 1980,” the female sniped. “You got a polyester leisure suit to match the dress, Tommy?”
Elisabeth felt stricken. She’d heard Tommy was a ladies man, but she hadn’t realized he already had a girlfriend. What an ass she had made of herself, practically throwing herself at his feet and begging him to come over for cookies? Cookies? What a dork!
“Hey, hey, hey,” Tommy parted the wall of female flesh as though they were the Red Sea and placed his arm around Elisabeth. He turned to his guy friends, ignoring the three girls. “Elisabeth can sing any note they put on those squiggly lines on the page without even hearing it on the piano first or nuthin. She saved my ass after Mr. White bagged me marking our territory.
“You’s lookin’ like a member of the choir!” one of the Latin Kings jibed, pretending to pull up his pants by the suspenders and then tugging up his pant-legs to floodwater stage.
“He told me it was either make an ass of myself,” Tommy laughed. “Or he was calling the cops and making sure I got sent off to juvie.”
“Dork-boys?” one of Tommy’s gang-friends snorted, striking a gang-pose. “You sure look like one of them’s dork-boys in those church-pants your Mama scrounged up from the Salvation Army!”
Tommy held up a high-five. “Right on! Here’s to dork boys outnumbered ten-to-one by hot babes. The most pleasant three credits I ever earned!”
The Latin Kings twittered with laughter. Elisabeth was amazed at how jibing which would have had any other gang member foaming at the mouth just rolled off Tommy’s back. She could see why he was able to walk in both worlds. The mere fact the Latin
Kings had turned out in force to watch him sing tonight was testament that it was possible.
“Hey…” a second gang-friend chipped in. “I kinda like the monkey suit. All ya need is a top hat and cane and you’ll look like that dude in them old movies from the fifties.”
“You mean Fred Astaire?” Tommy grabbed a fedora off one of his friends, slapping it upon his head as though it were a top hat, and reached for Elisabeth’s cane. “Hey … Elisabeth … you mind?”
Elisabeth relinquished her cane. Tommy did a little tap-dance around her like Fred Astaire, and then went into a perfect Charlie Chaplin routine, waddling like a penguin as he swung her cane around and around.
Elisabeth ignored Nancy’s frantic waving that the bus was here. She felt like she belonged. There would be another bus in twenty minutes…
* * * * *
Chapter 22
Alone of gods Death has no love for gifts,
Libation helps you not, nor sacrifice.
He has no altar, and hears no hymns;
From him alone Persuasion stands apart.
Aeschylus (525-465 B.C.) "Niobe"
Earth - AD December, 1999
Chicago, Illinois
Azrael sat, unseen, perched on the entrance portico supported by four enormous Corinthian columns, not sure whether to be jealous or happy his young subject finally appeared to be fitting in with her peers. It had been a long time since he'd seen her smile. Why didn't that make him happy? Nancy waved frantically as their bus came and left without them. It was curious behavior. Azrael did what he always did whenever something he observed did not make sense. He pulled out his notebook and began to take notes.
‘The subject is normally obedient to a fault,’ Azrael wrote, ‘diligently obeying the rules set down by her foster mother. But for some reason, with the addition of peers into the equation, all of a sudden the subject becomes reluctant to obey guidance from the parental authority figure.’
Out of the periphery of his vision, he noticed a fancy black SUV with tinted windows slow as it approached the bus stop. That same eerie sense of evil he often got whenever he teleported into a room where there were Agents present tickled at his subconscious, but this did not feel like an Agent. More like … a warning. He hesitated, trying to figure out what the sensation was.
Dark windows slid down. Gunshots erupted.
The Latin Kings screamed, throwing themselves down onto the sidewalk for cover like well-trained soldiers.
Elisabeth stood in shock, a tall red target amongst a sea of gang kids writhing on the ground.
His heart beat once.
An arm stuck out the window, taking aim. Without thinking, Azrael teleported himself to stand between Elisabeth and the drive-by shooters, not caring who he smote with the spread of his deadly wings or whether they saw him.
His heart beat twice.
The bullet hit him in the back of the wings, dissolving harmlessly into primordial nothingness. Elisabeth looked up, her beautiful, silver eyes locking with his as recognition dawned upon her face.
His heart beat a third time.
On the sidewalk around their feet, gang kids pulled knives and guns as they recovered and began to shoot back.
“It’s you?” Her words were lost in the screams, but her expression as she looked into his eyes said it all.
His heart beat a fourth time.
Parents screamed in terror as more gunshots erupted from the car. Azrael looked just in time to see a puzzled expression cross Nancy’s face. A red stain spread on the front of her pale blue frock. Elisabeth’s look of horror as Nancy crumpled to the ground was the same look he’d seen on Elissar’s face as she’d sunk down into the flames of Gehenna.
His heart beat a fifth time.
Anguish overrode reason as Azrael erupted into his true form, the Grim Reaper arriving to harvest the souls of the damned. A writhing black thundercloud of tentacles and jolts of electricity clawed into the car, shorting out the motor and dissolving fenders and doors. Without hesitation, he tore the souls of the five rival gang-members out of their mortal shells, punched a hole into Gehenna, and fed them straight into Moloch’s grinning maw.
It only took two minutes.
It took too long.
He returned, invisible once more. Elisabeth's hands were covered in blood as she pressed her hands into the gunshot wound in her foster mother's heart.
“Hang on, Nancy!” Elisabeth cried. “Please! Don’t leave me here alone!”
“The ambulance is on its way!” one of the other parents shouted, holding out their cell phone.
In the distance, police sirens could be heard. The gang kids had all disappeared, including Tommy. So had the parents and children, none wishing to take any chances with the mangled SUV stopped dead in the middle of the road. Two gang kids lay dead upon the ground, victims of senseless gang rivalry. Azrael listened for the viability of Nancy’s body, nostrils flaring as he recognized the scent of death.
“Elisabeth,” Nancy choked as her heart attempted to beat and could not.
Azrael could hear the bullet lodged in her heart, the severed artery causing blood to gurgle in the chamber, but not beat. How was Nancy even still alive? And conscious? Did Elisabeth possess latent healing ability? Azrael began to hope, against hope, that Nancy would beat the odds.
“Stay with me!” Elisabeth cried. “Nancy! Please stay with me! You’re going to be okay!”
Azrael knew Nancy saw him. Her consciousness fought to separate from her body and escape into the Dreamtime.
“Please …” Azrael said inside Nancy’s mind. “Hang on. Elisabeth needs you.”
“Elisabeth,” Nancy said. “I see him, your black man. He’s come for me.”
“Stay away from him!” Elisabeth shouted. “Do you hear me? Don’t you even look at him! You don’t have to go with him! Tell him no!”
“My grandmother waits for me,” Nancy said. “I can see her standing in a white room. She said it’s time to stop running away and come home.”
Azrael stepped closer, watching Elisabeth battle to keep her foster mother in this realm even as Nancy stretched her consciousness towards the Dreamtime. He’d seen humans refuse to leave their bodies or hover, unsure what to do once their mortal shells expired. He’d even seen a mated pair of Angelics cling to life together and then expire as one soul. But never had he witnessed one person hold another's consciousness in a broken body against their will.
“Please Nancy,” Azrael pleaded. “Don’t leave her. I won’t take you if you don’t want to go. I’ll ask the angels to come help you heal. Please! You’re all she has.”
“Let me go,” Nancy gasped in pain. She reached towards Azrael. “Please. Let me go with him. My grandmother wants me to come home.”
Azrael hadn’t detected a heartbeat in more than three minutes. He didn’t know what Elisabeth was doing, but somehow she was reanimating a dead body and forcing Nancy’s consciousness to inhabit it. Even if the ambulance came and shocked her heart, Azrael could hear the gurgle where the bullet had shattered two chambers and the aorta. The chances of Nancy getting a spur-of-the-moment heart transplant were zero and none.
“Take me home,” Nancy pleaded, her hand outstretched.
Azrael closed his eyes, trembling with the terrible choice he now faced. The only thing keeping Nancy here was her foster daughter's will to make her stay. Azrael had seen this happen once before … when Hayyel’s mate had drained the life from her own body trying to save him. Both had died.
“So beautiful, your watcher,” Nancy whispered to Elisabeth, her body shuddering with pain. “He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”
Elisabeth was only human. If he didn’t intervene, Nancy would pull Elisabeth into the Dreamtime along with her just as Hayyel had pulled his mate. Elisabeth wasn’t the only one who’d ever lost everyone she’d ever loved. After all these years shadowing her, hoping…
She would never forgive him!
He couldn’t bear to lose her,
too. Even if it meant she hated him for the rest of her painfully short human life.
A sob escaping his throat, Azrael reached down. Nancy’s hand clasped around his, her empty mortal arm falling limply to the ground the moment it made contact with his flesh.
“No!!!” Elisabeth screamed. She struck out with bloodied hands to grab the air where Nancy now stood between them, trying to grab her and hit him at the same time.
“I never believed her when she said you watched over her,” Nancy gave the body she left behind a cursory glance. “Will you keep protecting her?”
“No! No! No! Nooo!” Elisabeth keened, grabbing Nancy’s lifeless hand as she lifted her head into the air and screamed like a wounded panther.
“Yes,” Azrael said, his heart breaking along with his young subject's at what fate had just forced him to do. “I never … I had no idea this would happen. I would have tried to protect you, too.”
“I hate you!!!” Elisabeth screamed into the air, striking the empty air around her to hit him. “Do you hear me? I hate you!!!”
Tears sprang to Azrael’s eyes. He’d protected her life, but he’d failed to protect the one person who cared about her. For the second time in her young life, Elisabeth had just had him take everyone away from her.
“Come,” Nancy tugged his hand. “My grandmother calls to me. She’s the only one who ever really cared about me. Will you bring me to her?”
Azrael looked at Elisabeth, screaming that she hated him as the police and ambulance drivers finally arrived and attempted to resuscitate her foster mother and the other two victims. Police swarmed the black SUV, tearing open mangled doors to arrest the gunmen and scratching their heads in puzzlement as they realized all five gangbangers were dead without a scratch.
Azrael’s wings flared with indecision, nearly zapping one of the paramedics. He didn’t want to leave Elisabeth here alone. Not even for a second…
