by Nana Malone
“No!”
“Then I’ll just wait,” Elisabeth said. “You have to come out sometime.”
“No … I don’t,” Azrael said. “I’m not … real. I’m not even alive! I can sit in here until this planet’s sun turns into a red giant.”
“Fine,” Elisabeth said. “Then I’ll just sit out here until I’m reported absent without leave and they come to court martial me. The battle is going badly just north of here. Soldiers will die because I’m not there to save them. It will be all your fault.”
Silence.
She looked at Sam. Sam looked at her and shrugged.
“I’ve got to get back to work guarding the other potential hosts,” Sam said loudly enough so Azrael could hear it through the door. “When the MP’s come, I’ll tell them where to find you.”
“Thanks, Sam,” Elisabeth said just as loudly. “Hopefully they won’t take me away in handcuffs and throw me in a jail cell with rats. I hate rats.”
“Good thing we’re not in Saudi Arabia,” Sam said loudly. “The morality police would definitely arrest you in that getup. I don’t think you’re supposed to go wandering around an active war zone wearing nothing but boxer shorts.”
Elisabeth suppressed a smile as Sam stomped his boots on the hard soil so Azrael could hear him move away. Sam had obviously spent considerable time ‘handling’ their sensitive friend. Angel of Death her foot! Azrael did what he did because there was no one else who could do his job. Not because he enjoyed it!
She waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Silence.
Was he even still in there? She knew he could flash from one place to another simply by thinking about it. But she could sense he was still crammed into the too-tight shed, probably concentrating with all his might to not accidentally dissolve the walls of his hideout.
What might coax him out of his stinky bower? Hmmm… She knew what he craved most in the world. Staring at the ground until she found what she wanted, she picked up a rounded pebble, clutched it to her chest, and gave it a kiss.
“I’ve got something for you,” Elisabeth slipped the pebble beneath the uneven wooden door.
“What?” Azrael said, a sniffle in his voice.
“A hug and a kiss.”
“My touch is death,” Azrael said. “In case you didn’t get the memo.”
“I know,” Elisabeth said. “So I put it in that pebble I just slid under the door. You can pick it up and do that thing you do to make it disappear into your hand, and then you can have it. A hug. And a kiss. From me. ‘Cause you really seem like you need one right about now.”
Silence.
She heard the slight scrape of wings against the wall of the shed. They didn’t dissolve, so he must be in control enough of his emotions to remain solid. She heard him find the pebble in the dark.
Silence.
He fumbled with the latch. With a squeal like a haunted house, Azrael swung open the rickety door and peered outside.
“Thanks,” he said. “I … um … kind of needed that.”
“I know.”
Silence.
She waited.
He stood there. Not moving. His expression anxious. Although he’d explained his physical form was not ‘real,’ a figment of his imagination, his imagination told him it would be appropriate to manifest his appearance as having puffy eyes from crying because it was obvious he was seriously upset.
“I … um …” Elisabeth said. “I forgot to bring my cane. Can we go someplace we can sit down to talk? Please? My leg hurts.”
Azrael hesitated.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said mournfully.
“Then you can sit out of wing-whack range,” Elisabeth said.
“That might not be far enough,” Azrael said, his eyes haunted.
“Then we’ll sit far enough apart that I can run away if you turn into the boogey man,” Elisabeth said.
Azrael froze. It was the wrong thing to say.
“Listen,” Elisabeth said. “I don’t know what happened. And I’m not going to know unless you tell me. So either you come tell me like a big person. Or I’m going to have to wrestle your friend to the ground using one of those Canadian Special Forces holds Kadima's husband taught me and force Sam to tell me at gunpoint.”
“Sam’s a lot … bigger … than he looks,” Azrael said.
“Then it will be your fault if I get hurt,” Elisabeth said sweetly, using every feminine wile she possessed to appeal to Azrael’s overdeveloped sense of chivalry.
Silence.
“Okay,” Azrael said. “We can … um … go over here to talk. But I … um … I want you to stay at least fifteen feet away from me at all times in case … in case I lose control.”
“I highly doubt that,” Elisabeth hobbled over to a strategically placed boulder. She groaned with not-too exaggerated pain as she sat down upon the rock.
Azrael stood exactly fifteen feet away, his wings poised as though ready to take flight and clutched his cloak around his physical form. She waited. After months of almost daily conversations, she knew he would talk when he was ready.
Elisabeth picked up another pebble and pretended to stare at it. She watched Azrael’s reaction, the way his nostrils flared as he gauged her mood from her scent the way a dog might gauge the mood of its owner. Azrael claimed he didn’t need to breathe anymore, but his consciousness automatically recreated the illusion of physiological processes he’d once possessed when he’d still been mortal. She suspected it was a trait he fostered within himself so he would feel alive. Azrael obsessed over the difference between being dead … or alive … and all the millions of shades of grey which lay somewhere in between those two states.
“I made … a mistake,” Azrael finally said, his voice almost a whisper.
Elisabeth waited, her expression sympathetic and interested as she waited for him to tell her more.
“I … killed … somebody,” Azrael said. “An … innocent.”
Elisabeth had already figured that much out on her own. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen a soldier come in all freaked out because he’d thought he was killing an insurgent and had either killed or wounded a civilian. Dealing with this kind of thing was part of her training.
“It happens sometimes,” Elisabeth said, filling her voice with understanding. “This is a war zone. Accidents happen.”
“He was just a boy,” Azrael suppressed a sob. “The squatter pulled him right in front of him when I went to take him. I should have known better. I should have known better than to try to take him with a hostage that close. It was so … obvious … that was what he meant to do! What kind of person uses a child as a human shield?”
Azrael turned his back to her so she wouldn’t see him cry. His wings drooped to the ground in despair, glossy black feathers trailing lines of dissolved matter in the dusty soil as his shoulders dry-heaved the sobs he kept from escaping his throat.
“Oh … Az." She’d counseled soldiers before with almost identical incidents, but this was the first time she’d been friends with the soldier who was freaked out. “Listen. You only go after the worst of the worst bad guys. This is what they do. This is what they do so people like us won’t go after them. They know we feel despair when an innocent person gets in our way and dies. But you can’t just not go after them! If you give up … they win!”
“Never!” Azrael hissed, his back straightening ramrod straight. He turned, his eyes black with anger as his wings flared as though stabbing someone. “Moloch will never win so long as there’s a single subatomic particle of my consciousness still in existence!”
Elisabeth smiled. Anger. She had a whole lifetime’s worth of experience in harnessing anger to overcome adversity. Azrael might be a tender and sweet like a peach. But beneath that tenderness lay a stony pit that would break your teeth if you made the mistake of thinking you could bite off a chunk and spit it out.
“We have a saying in my
country,” Elisabeth said. “Payback’s a bitch. If you can’t undo what you’ve done, then all you can do is get even.”
Azrael took one step forward, his mouth opening as though to agree with her, and then stepped back.
“You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “I lost control. I lost control of my gift.”
“I’ve seen you lose control once before,” Elisabeth said gently. “Remember? The day Nancy died?”
“That was … intentional,” Azrael said cautiously. “They tried to shoot you and they did shoot Nancy. It was … justified. This was different. I’ve gotten upset and destroyed things before. But not … this. This was bad.”
“Then you need to train yourself to keep control so it doesn’t happen again,” Elisabeth said. “Do you think you’re the only person who ever screwed up?”
“I … don’t…” Azrael said, unsure of his answer.
“Do you think you’re the only person who ever bought a shiny new car and then got in an accident?” Elisabeth asked. “Or put their heart and soul into building some new project? A dream house? A company? A railroad bridge? And then had it all come tumbling down around your ears for reasons that might or might not have anything to do with you?”
“No,” Azrael's voice trembled with emotion.
“You get right back behind the wheel of the car and you be more careful next time,” Elisabeth said. “You look up the building code next time you put a hammer to wood so your house doesn’t fall down around your ears. Or you ask for help if something is beyond your expertise so you learn to do it right next time so you don’t fuck up. That’s what it means to be human!”
Azrael’s wings quivered with indecision as he absorbed her words.
“What happened, Az?” Elisabeth asked softly. “I can’t help you fix the problem if you don’t talk about it.”
Azrael began to cry for real this time, not bothering to hide it. Elisabeth waited, allowing him his grief. Whatever had happened, it had upset him enough to hide knee-deep in goat shit for the past six days so he’d be close enough to protect the people Sam’s men were guarding inside the house from whatever evil bad dude Azrael had tried, and failed, to reap. Azrael was a peculiar mixture of sensitivity and courage, but he was no wilting wallflower.
“I can’t find him,” Azrael finally said between hiccoughs.
“Find who?” Elisabeth asked.
“The boy,” Azrael said. “I searched and searched for him. He never made it into the Dreamtime.”
“Oh,” Elisabeth said, not sure what to say. “Where else might he have gone?”
Azrael sat down on a low stone wall and clutched his knees to his chest, pulling his wings around himself so Elisabeth couldn’t see his face.
“I think I ate him,” Azrael mumbled from behind the feathers.
“You … what?"
“She said I would feel hunger,” Azrael's wings muffled his words and making them sound as though he were speaking through a wall. “When I got big enough. But I … um … the bad guys. I … uh … you know that thing I do with the rocks. Like you just had me do to the pebble?”
“Dissipation,” Elisabeth said. “You call it dissipation.”
“I fear that’s what happened to the boy,” Azrael said. “When I tried to get away from the squatter.”
“Wait … get away from the squatter?” Elisabeth asked. “I thought … you said you just touch them and they drop dead.”
“This one didn’t,” Azrael said. “I mean … the shell he squatted on did. But his consciousness … he’s too powerful.”
“Who is he?” Elisabeth wished she knew more about the inner workings of the world Azrael lived in instead of bits and pieces coaxed out of him. Until now, she’d thought the other celestial creatures were afraid of Azrael.
“His name is Chemosh,” Azrael said. “He’s a god. Like Moloch. A really, really bad god. He’s a lot bigger than I am.”
“Oh,” Elisabeth was beginning to get an idea of what had happened. “So … this guy … Shamoo.”
“Chemosh,” Azrael corrected.
“Chemosh,” Elisabeth repeated. “So this evil bad dude, Chemosh, used this kid as a human shield? And then he was winning, because he’s a lot bigger than you. And you were trying to defend yourself, right?”
“Right,” Azrael wrapped his wings even more tightly around himself.
“So you had to … what?” Elisabeth said. “Use your gift in a way you never had to do before? To stay … alive?”
“I think so,” Azrael said. “I haven’t felt that frightened since tangling with Moloch.”
“So it was you,” Elisabeth said. “Or this evil Chemosh guy. And you defended yourself. And the kid got in the way?”
“Um … yes,” Azrael said.
“So you … what? Dissolved everything around you into … goo … like you do with the rocks … and this kid … who was still around … got in the way somehow?”
“Yes,” Azrael said. “No? I don’t know!!! All I know is he was there and I told him to get the hell out of there because I couldn’t control it. And then he disappeared and I couldn’t find him.”
“Did you check that gateway you sometimes tell me about? Maybe he found his own way there? You said that’s what usually happens, anyway.”
“He wasn’t there,” Azrael said. “I checked. I could find no sign of him.”
“Isn’t there some way you could find out for sure?” Elisabeth asked. “I mean … isn’t God supposed to be in charge of who gets past the pearly gates? Or Saint Peter, maybe?”
“There is no Saint Peter,” Azrael said. “At least … not guarding the pathway mortals take to enter the Dreamtime.”
“Isn’t there somebody you could just ask? I mean … the answer might be ‘no.’ The kid never found his way. But if you’re going to beat yourself up over this for the rest of eternity, at least be sure about it.”
“There might be somebody I can ask,” Azrael's wings finally parted as he peeked through, his brow furrowed in thought. “Through certain channels.”
“Then I suggest you do that,” Elisabeth raised both eyebrows. “And figure out who might be able to help you learn to control your gift better so you don’t accidentally vaporize the wrong person the next time you’re put into that situation. It makes a lot more sense than hiding in a goat shed in the middle of a war zone.”
“Oh,” Azrael said. “Yes. Of course. The Regent … I’ll ask her to … she can ask … and maybe … yes … SHE might talk … to him.”
Elisabeth had no idea who Azrael would ask to do what, but the idea put him at ease. She prayed, for his sake, that the missing boy had made it into the afterlife or, failing that, that this goddess Azrael told her about, the one who’d purportedly once been human, knew where to send him for some obi-wan Zen training so he didn’t become a hermit. That would make her unhappy. Elisabeth had made a lot of friends since joining the Army, but her closest friend of all was the one who’d been silently shadowing her for the past ten years. Now that she’d finally gotten to know him, she didn’t want to lose him.
She noticed Azrael intently watched her. Studying her. Trying to discern the train of her thoughts from her body language, scent pheromones, and heart rate, which she knew he could hear every tiny nuance. Let him discern this…
Elisabeth took the pebble she’d been tossing in her hand, clutched to her chest as she had the first one, and gave the pebble a kiss. Stepping forward to middle ground, she placed the pebble down upon the ground.
“That’s for you.” Her eyes met his bottomless black ones that swirled darker whenever he felt strong emotion. “A hug for the next time you need one.”
His nostrils flared as he inhaled her scent. His wary expression gave way to pure longing as he stepped forward and picked up the pebble, quivering like a dog. He stepped back. Quickly. As though afraid she’d leap forward to touch him and then he’d be responsible for her death as well.
“Thank you.” He clutched the pebbl
e to his heart.
It was the closest, she knew, he’d come to touching another non-ascended living creature without reaping them since the day she’d had her car accident.
“Consider yourself kissed,” Elisabeth said.
* * * * *
Chapter 39
If hundreds of thousands of suns
Rose up at once into the sky,
They might resemble the effulgence
Of the Supreme Person
In that universal form.
Bhagavad Gita 11:12
Galactic Standard Date: 157,731.03 AE
Haven-1
“He’ll see you now,” the Archangel Jeremiel nodded towards the double doors he guarded off a very ordinary white hallway. “Go ahead in. They shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Thank you,” Azrael gulped. “Usually we meet in the throne room. This is the first time the Emperor has invited me into his genetics laboratory.”
Jeremiel stepped aside so Azrael could pass. Azrael noted the way his Archangel brethren stepped much further away from the door than normal to avoid a brush of one of Azrael’s deadly wings. Although a full-fledged Archangel like Jeremiel could survive a ‘brush with death’ by pulling his damaged physical form into the upper realms and reconstituting it, it was an unpleasant, time-consuming experience most ascended creatures avoided like the plague.
“I’m not exactly a welcome guest,” Azrael added, tucking his wings against his back. “Too many delicate pieces of equipment I might short out.”
As though in reply, the lights in the hallway dimmed and brightened to reflect his nervousness. It wasn’t a question of would he disrupt the electromagnetic field of everything he was near, but how badly. It all depended upon his emotional state. Right now, he was nervous as hell.
“Go,” Jeremiel reassured him with a smile. “The Emperor doesn’t bite. Much. Well … sometimes he does. But I hear Lucifer deserved it. What's he really like?”
"Arrogant," Azrael gave Jeremiel a salute, "contradictory, unpredictable, and debauch." He didn't add that after personally tangling with the evil bastard who'd snatched him out from under Hashem's nose at fifteen years old and manipulated him into being a host for Moloch, he'd found the man rather hard to hate.
