by Nana Malone
A non-corporeal hand reached up to touch his cheek.
“I’m glad she has you in her life,” Nancy said. “I can find my own way. It would make me feel better if you stay with her.”
"Thank you," Azrael replied.
He stepped closer to Elisabeth as a police officer pried her off her foster mother’s body. The officer tried to make sense of her wailing keens about black men and monsters, asking her to repeat it several times. They thought she screamed she hated the gangbangers. Only Azrael knew she hated him.
Nancy stepped into a white light and was gone, having found her own path into the Dreamtime as most sentient creatures had done since time immemorial. Elisabeth had only prolonged the inevitable.
Tucking his wings against his back and wrapping his cloak so he didn’t inadvertently kill anybody else today, Azrael followed her. Paramedics verified none of the blood was hers. Police questioned her. There were police reports. Calls to social services agencies too busy to care about a seventeen-year-old girl whose foster mother had just died. Queries about relatives who were all dead. Finally, a police officer simply put her in the back of his cruiser and drove her home to her empty house.
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…” Elisabeth keened, lobbing whatever object she could lay her hands on at wherever he stood, invisible, until she finally cried herself to sleep.
Azrael stood watch, but he did not dare comfort her. Not because he feared violating the prohibitions against making himself seen, or interfering, or even displeasing the two emperors, but because she would claw his eyes out and, in doing so, the curse that was his deadly existence would kill her.
“I’m so sorry…” Azrael wept as he sat on the floor of the hall outside her small room and pressed his wings against the wall, mourning what he’d been forced to do.
As long as she lived, she would never forgive him...
Before he left, he changed the page on the Collected Works of Emily Dickenson he’d left on her bureau this morning to inspire her singing to a poem more suited to the circumstances. It was the only way he could communicate how sorry he was.
I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.
Azrael failed to notice his wings had dissipated the wall where he’d sat. No matter how many coats of gypsum the landlord piled onto the wall, nothing would ever remove the imprint of wings where the Angel of Death had wept.
* * * * *
Chapter 23
As I look upon Thy mouths
Terrible with many tusks of destruction.
Thy faces like the fires of Death and Time,
I lose sense of the directions and find no peace.
Turn Thy heart to grace, O God of gods!
Refuge of all the worlds!
Bhagavad Gita 11:25
Earth: January 5, 2000
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Azrael stood just far enough back from the window of the Sri Lankan Prime Minister’s residence so he was out of sight, watching Sata’an-human hybrids scurry around in police uniforms and trench coats. Six security guards, one of them a Sata’an-human agent embedded with their security force, and some unfortunate woman who’d been seized as a host by one of Moloch’s squatters under the guise of ‘recruitment’ for the Tamil Tigers, were dead.
The Sri Lankan leader had been whisked off to safety, claims leaked to the media that he hadn’t even been home. Truth was, today’s operation had been a failure, just like everything else Azrael attempted to do lately. Fail! Fail! Fail! Everything he touched just withered and died!
A potted palm grew at the side of the window; a magnificent, pampered specimen. He concentrated, willing with every ounce of his being to, just once, not kill a living thing as he touched one leaf between his thumb and forefinger. The leaves wilted, turned black and disintegrated. Azrael’s wings drooped to the ground, the white marble also turning into a puddle of black nothingness at his feet.
“Ahem,” Special Agent Emmett Till coughed, making his presence known. “Major Thanatos. Are you okay?”
Emmett Till, named after the murdered African American boy who’d sparked off the civil rights movement, was second in command to Samuel Adams. Ironically, this Emmett Till was as pale and white as any other Eastern European human, but it hadn’t stopped his parents from idealizing the oppression the original Emmett had come to symbolize amongst their species, forced to lurk in the shadows by a 5,500 year old war humanity had no idea was still being fought to this day. Azrael had worked with Special Agent Till many times.
“We should have seen this coming,” Azrael's voice was lackluster. “When the suffragists began demanding equal rights for women, I don’t think this is what they had in mind.”
“The Tamil Tigers are actively recruiting women to act as suicide bombers,” Emmett said. “They knew we’d be looking for a man.”
“Why are Moloch’s agents suddenly able to seize women?” Azrael pondered. “They’ve never been successful before. Not on this scale. The way their brains are wired makes them too difficult to control as hosts.”
“This is a Muslim country,” Emmett repeated. “The Tamil Tigers dangle the promise of equality, including the right to fight alongside the men, and recruit their fighters when they’re still children, eight or nine years old. Their brains are still malleable. Moloch is simply replicating his success with Lucifer.”
Azrael sighed. Lucifer. The longer he was forced to serve alongside the estranged son of the Eternal Emperor, the more he sympathized with him … and the so-called ‘demons’ who served under him. With the exception of the General, who made a point of personally checking in on Earth from time to time, the others of his species, both ascended and mortal, just didn’t get it.
“I didn’t spot the squatter until she’d already detonated her vest,” Azrael said. “His control of his host was nearly seamless.”
“Hashem never noticed anything amiss with Lucifer, either,” Emmett reminded him. “And Lucifer was infected with Moloch himself. Not just some lesser Agent.”
Azrael glanced out the window and watched Sata’an-hybrid agents use shovels and buckets to remove body parts off the ground because the remains were too shattered to simply put into a body bag.
“Is there enough left to perform an autopsy?” Azrael asked.
“Already on it,” Emmett said. “Lucifer is taking a personal interest in this case. He’s got us checking for technological implants.”
“As if Lucifer would get his hands dirty,” Azrael snorted.
Emmett blinked with his clear, protective inner eyelid, giving away an otherwise flawless disguise as a full-blooded human.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Emmett said. “Lucifer has been doing nothing but getting his hands dirty for the past 5,500 years. You sound like one of them.”
Azrael paused. Emmett was right. Every time he made a trip back to Ceres Station, his fellow Alliance citizen's condescending attitude towards humans and the Fallen who babysat them rubbed off. It was easy to criticize the goings-on of Earth from the comfort of space when you didn't actually have to live here, on Earth, with Moloch destabilizing every accomplishment the humans made. He was behaving unfairly.
“I apologize.” Azrael turned back towards the window. “It’s just … his extracurricular activities have a way of making you forget just how much of a sacrifice he’s made by staying here.”
“His 1,000 year sentence was up 4,500 years ago,” Emmett said. “The only reason he’s still here is because She-who-is won’t let him enter the Dreamtime. He promised his mate he’d protect his people until he could join him there.”
Azrael’s thoughts drifted to his young friend … and her tragic demise so many years before. Elissar. Although all o
f Lucifer’s prodigious offspring inherited his intellect and a modicum of his ‘power of persuasion,’ only Elissar had ever shown true pre-ascended abilities. Abilities he’d scrutinized the teenaged Elisabeth for … hoping.
Usually he knew when he dealt with a recycled consciousness because he’d get echoes of past life memories, but with Elisabeth he got nothing. It was as though she wished to remain hidden.
These days, she just wished him gone. Now that she knew he was more than a figment of her imagination, she flew at him, screaming, whenever he checked in on her. Even attempts to lift her mood by leaving inspirational readings were met with hostility. He’d had more than one book dissipate into primordial nothingness when she’d lobbed it at his head, her ability to sense his location no matter how well he kept himself hidden uncanny.
The last thing he wished was to cause her any more pain. He'd finally retreated so far away to make his observations that he could barely sense her anymore.
Touch. He’d been so focused on physical touch that he hadn’t been aware that for the past eight years he’d been wallowing in the pleasure of Elisabeth’s non-physical touch. Her consciousness was larger than most humans, large enough that she could sense him from quite a distance. And him … her. It wasn’t until he’d suddenly been shut off that he realized he’d been touching her the only way he could all this time.
His wings drooped further as he deliberately dissipated the tie-back for one of the garishly ornate drapes. He then attempted to reshape it back the way it was before, as the Regent had been trying to teach him, and had no luck. He sighed, his dark mood weighing upon the room like a fog.
“I wish he’d just stop doing … you know,” Azrael mumbled, staring out the window at the gruesome spectacle below. “So things wouldn’t be so murky.”
“He’s the most misunderstood Angelic in the universe,” Emmett's tail twitched with exasperation as he defended his Fallen leader. “His real father, who desperately wanted a child, never knew he existed because his adopted father stole him before he was even born. And then his adopted father abandoned him when his mother died. And then Moloch grabs him for a host and nobody gave a crap enough about him to even notice. And then, to top it off, Hashem let Moloch’s agents kill his mate, the only person who ever really gave a crap about him, because he was pissed off!”
“Yeah,” Azrael watched them finish shovel entrails off the sidewalk. “I guess you’re right.”
“He’s the only person who’s got an even shittier deal than you do,” Emmett said.
A second tier of otherwise human-looking agents began sweeping the area with magnifying glasses, a metal detector, and tweezers. Beyond the compound, a large crowd of local civilians had gathered, rubber-necking to see the carnage. Azrael’s thoughts turned from self-pity to the reason he was here. Something was going on. He just couldn’t put his finger on it.
“If the Tamil Tigers really wanted casualties,” Azrael's wings twitched with thought. “They should have waited until now to detonate a bomb.”
“Already got special agents dressed as civilians sweeping the crowd,” Emmett said. “Just in case.”
“Good.” Azrael stared at the crowd of gawkers, focusing on the subtle body language of the people below. Some stared with horror, hands over their mouths or weeping as they pointed to the blood-stained ground. But others … others lauded praises upon the woman who’d turned her body into a bomb to get at an unpopular elected official.
Human nature … forever see-sawing between hope and violence. If Azrael, himself, hadn’t grabbed the squatter within seconds of the bomb exploding, this could easily be mistaken for a random act of violence.
“Is it just me?” Azrael asked, “or have the terrorist acts Moloch’s Agents have been pulling lately changed?”
“I haven’t been around as long as you have, Sir,” Emmett said. “But … yes. The older Fallen have the same complaint as you do. Moloch has always allied with shadow-corporations and puppet governments, but now he’s coming at us sideways with these random acts of violence and we can’t figure out why.”
“Sideways,” Azrael pondered. “Moloch has always cultivated potential enemies. But this … yes. I agree. Sideways is an apt verb to describe that vague feeling I keep having that we’re missing something important.”
The two of them stared out the window, together, at the grim specter being hosed off the sidewalk below.
"Sometimes I feel as though it is the end of days," Azrael softly. "As though we're in the middle of war, only we're so blind none of us have woken up yet to realize we're even fighting it yet."
"We've always known this is a war, Sir," Emmett said. His cheek twitched with suppressed anger. "How could we not know we're all condemned to fight it? We're the ones being used as cannon fodder."
"This is different," Azrael fingered his cloak pocket where he kept his scientific journal. "I can feel it. I just haven't tracked the data yet to quantify it."
“Why Moloch is suddenly so interested in this part of the world," Emmett asked. "Sri Lanka isn’t on a major geological fault line, so there’s no easy way to punch a hole into Gehenna. If we hadn’t received intelligence from an ally there was suspicious activity, we wouldn’t even be here.”
Azrael absent-mindedly curled one wing forward as he stared out the window, twirling a tendril of consciousness shaped to resemble a long primary feather as he mulled over the latest pattern of suspicious activity. Emmett gave a polite cough, his grin revealing the slightly pointed shape of his teeth. Azrael looked down and realized he’d twirled that portion of his wing into something resembling an enormous pig’s tail. Azrael reshaped the limb back into a wing.
“As much as I hate to admit this,” Azrael surreptitiously rustled his feathers to make sure he hadn’t let any other part of his appearance slip. “No matter how long I police his Agents, I just don’t have a devious enough mind to foresee some of the stunts Moloch pulls.”
“Lucifer really is the only person who can outthink the bastard,” Emmett said. “And even he has a hard time keeping a lid on things. Did you ever stop and think there’s a good reason She-who-is forces him to babysit this planet?”
“Harumpf!” Azrael snorted. “Now that’s a scary thought! The humans have this saying. It takes a thief to catch one…”
“That’s Lucifer,” Emmett laughed. “He’s like … a cross between Robin Hood and King Arthur.”
“More like the fox assigned to guard the hen-house!” Azrael's dark mood lifted for the first time in weeks. “Sure … he guards it. But every time you see him, he’s got a mouth full of feathers.”
“And how that fox does love those lovely hens,” Emmett said.
“Yes … he does,” Azrael's hand tingled. His smile disappeared at the perpetual sense of urgency which had niggled his subconscious since the day he’d first met the source of that sensation. Elisabeth. He fell silent, staring out the window at the agents now hosing down the blood off the sidewalk.
“Sir?” Emmett asked. His tail twitched with concern. “I … um … we all kind of noticed you ain’t been too happy lately. Is there anything we can do to help?”
The part-Sata’an human tucked his tail up one side as full-blooded Sata’anic soldiers still did in the Sata’anic Empire, not sure if he crossed a magical line subordinates should never cross with a superior officer. 5,500 years amongst humans and the Sata’an-human hybrids had never fully lost their strict Sata’anic adherence to chains of command and rigid social structure. It was only the past few centuries, with the rise of democratic experiments in the America’s, the French Revolution, and Ghandi in India, that the hybrids had begun idealizing notions of freedom and casting off Sata’anic mores. It was why so many Sata'an-human hybrids were named after freedom fighters.
“No,” Azrael sighed. “I guess I’ve been off my game.”
Emmett shifted from one foot to the other as he treaded further onto delicate ground.
“Sam … um …” Emmett said. “
He um … said … someone caught your interest. But they … um … I just want you to understand that … um … we all know what it’s like when a human rejects you for something that ain’t your fault! Sir!”
Azrael scrutinized Emmett’s uneasy demeanor. Lucifer demanded they keep him up to date on Elisabeth’s progress so he could nudge open doors and put bees in ears to help the young woman along. He wasn’t being entirely altruistic, though she wasn’t the first human the Fallen Angelic had lavished resources upon simply because they’d sparked his interest. His 'pets' Lucifer called them, fluffing off inquiries about why he sometimes chose random humans to help for no reason other than it suited his mood.
In Elisabeth’s case, Lucifer had originally taken an interest hoping she’d develop pre-ascended abilities so he could leave this world. She hadn’t. At least that’s what they’d thought until the day she’d forced Nancy to linger in a body with a shattered heart. Now … Azrael suspected Lucifer kept tabs on Elisabeth because she was the only leverage the Fallen Angelic had to get into his good graces. She was the only person, besides Elissar, who’d ever inspired him to break Hashem’s strict rules about non-interference.
“First I took away her entire family,” Azrael said. “And then I took the only person left in this world who cared about her. I don’t blame her for hating me.”
“We … um …” Emmett said. “We … ah … we all think you should just make yourself visible and talk to her. See what happens.”
“The Emperor forbids it,” Azrael said. “You know that. I’m no more permitted to make myself known than you are.”
“She’s already seen you twice,” Emmett said. “The damage is done. What could it hurt?”
“She keeps throwing things at me,” Azrael said. “I’m afraid she might touch me and die.”
“I think if you help her understand,” Emmett said, “it will make her … I dunno … feel better?”
