by C. L. Coffey
“Now we sit here and watch,” Veronica told me. Her attention was back on Bee’s.
My internal clock told me it was getting close to midnight. If this was a weekend, it would still be early and the numbers inside of Bee’s would continue to increase, however, seeing as how it was the middle of the week, I figured this was probably the busiest it was going to get. For tonight, sitting and watching probably was the best option, but only for tonight. “And what about tomorrow?” I asked.
She chewed on the bottom of her lip for a moment and then shrugged. “We need to get in that bar,” she told me simply.
“And how do you propose we do that?” I asked. “Without an ID we aren’t getting in.”
“Well maybe we need to sneak in,” Veronica suggested. “There will have to be a back door to that place. Maybe I could even, you know, get us in.”
I knew exactly what she was suggesting. I shook my head. “Where do you need to get in to?” The voice asking the question wasn’t mine, but was Ty’s. He set our drinks on the table, but lingered in front of us.
I stared up at him feeling like I had been caught doing something I shouldn’t, which technically I had. I didn’t know what to say without saying something else I shouldn’t, or telling him a really bad lie, which was, for some reason, something I really didn’t want to do. Thankfully, Veronica knew exactly what to say. “We need to get into Bee’s,” she told him.
Ty looked thoughtfully at her then turned his attention to me. “Why?”
Again, I froze up. The words on the tip of my tongue were the truth, and I had to bite the side of my cheek not to say them. “We have a friend,” Veronica lied easily, instead. “And her boyfriend works in there. Only, she is convinced he is cheating on her with the DJ, so we want to check.”
“Could she not just ask him?” Ty suggested.
Veronica shrugged. “He says he isn’t,” Veronica continued. I stared at her, trying to keep the amazed look from my face at how easily she managed to spin this lie. “She goes in there all the time, so they know what she looks like. We said we would go in and do a little recon for her. Only they have now started asking for ID at the door.”
Ty hugged his tray to his chest, and glanced over his shoulder, off the balcony towards Bee’s. Finally, he turned back to us. He pulled out the remaining chair at the table and sat down, setting the empty tray on the floor beside him. Resting his forearms on the table in front of him he leaned forward. “I know a guy,” he said. “You can get your fake ID.”
Veronica let out an excited squeal. “That’s amazing!” she told him.
“Not you. Her,” he said pointing at me. “I’m sorry, but there is no ID on Earth that will have anybody convinced you’re twenty-one. You look too young.”
I looked at Veronica, surprised to see that she looked like she was sulking. For the first time since I had met her, she was truly fitting the emo teenager stereotype, matching her vessel’s appearance. I quickly shook my head. “Thanks,” I told Ty. “But I don’t want to go in by myself.”
“No,” Veronica said firmly. “Get a fake ID for Angel,” she instructed Ty, before turning to me. “Someone needs to go in there,” she told me. “We need to know.”
“How much are these going to cost us?” I asked, warily. My experience with fake IDs told me that if you wanted a good one, one which would hold up under scrutiny, you had to fork over some serious money.
Ty’s eyes, partially obscured by shade so they now resembled molten pools of Onyx, were fixed firmly on me. “It will cost you absolutely nothing, provided you agree to model for me,” he informed me, a slight smug look about him. “On top of that, I will even go into that bar with you, so you don’t have to go in by yourself.”
“I’m not allowed to date,” I blurted out, feeling myself go red as I did so.
Beside me Veronica rolled her eyes, and followed it up with a not-so-subtle punch to my arm. “He’s not asking you to marry him,” she told me. She turned to Ty and flashed a bright smile. “It’s a deal.”
“Cool,” he grinned back, before turning to me. “And for the record, I already have a girlfriend.”
CHAPTER NINE
Falling Feathers
“What was all that about?” I demanded in a hissed whisper as Veronica and I sneaked back into the convent. It had taken me until now to break out of my stunned, and embarrassed, silence.
“What was what about?” Veronica asked me innocently, blinking her eyes in a way that told me she knew exactly what I was talking about.
“‘He’s not asking you to marry him’,” I ground out to her. “I know perfectly well he wasn’t asking me to marry him. What he was doing, was asking me out on a date.”
“Was he? I thought he had a girlfriend?”
I had honestly thought that being several millennia old, and never having gone to a human high school, much less spent time around teenage boys, that she wouldn’t have picked up on the fact. Her tone told me otherwise. My mouth fell open. “You knew.”
“Of course I did,” Veronica snorted. We had made it to the back door but she hesitated before opening it. “Look, I know it’s a relationship that could never go anywhere, but who says every relationship has to? It has taken you six weeks to leave your bedroom, have some fun.”
“I thought angels and humans-”
Veronica cut me off with a sharp shake of her head. “Goodness gracious, I am not telling you to sleep with him, and just to be clear, neither am I hinting at it. But it is okay for you to have some fun. Besides, he could actually be telling the truth. He could well have a girlfriend and have completely innocent intentions.”
She had opened the door and disappeared into the convent before I had even begun to process what she had just said. I quickly hurried after her. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain why I was dressed as I was and outside at this time of night, even if there were no restrictions on my comings and goings.
In my room, I went to pull out the England football shirt I slept in, and frowned when I remembered the last place I had seen it was in Joshua’s apartment. I contemplated heading over there to collect it, but I wasn’t ready to face Joshua. Not after how I had left things. That could wait for a day when I wasn’t exhausted.
Instead, I pulled out a green Tulane t-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts. After quickly removing my makeup and brushing my teeth, I switched out the light and sank into bed.
I thought the previous night at Joshua’s had been something of an anomaly. After weeks of not being able to sleep, I expected to be wide awake all night long, especially after the day I’d had. Somehow, against all odds, I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.
The reason I knew this was because I was dreaming. At first there was nothing unusual, or significant, about it. I was back in class listening to one of my least favorite teachers drone on about the American Civil War. Yawn. Even my dreams were sending me to sleep. Perhaps it was my subconscious telling me I had a lot of catching up on sleep to do.
And then the classroom door opened, and Michael walked in.
I sat bolt upright, the action causing a considerable amount of noise, but nobody paid any attention. Then again, if no one noticed that Michael was standing in the middle of the room, they weren’t going to notice my racket. “What are you doing here?” I asked him in amazement.
“I have been waiting for you to sleep, for a very long time,” Michael told me gently.
“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“There is something I want to show you, but I cannot do it when we are awake,” he explained as the class carried on around him.
I was dubious, and to be honest, a little wary. Recently it seemed that all I did was piss the archangel off, and I’d rather remain in that boring dream lesson than anger him again. When I realized my hesitating was also likely to annoy him, I got to my feet and joined him. He held out his hand, and without putting off the inevitable any longer, I took it.
As soon as I d
id my dream went black. If it wasn’t for Michael still holding onto my hand, I might have started to panic. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. At the feel of icy air blowing against my face, I opened my eyes and stared in confusion, barely able to see the archangel holding my hand through the snow. “Where are we?” I asked.
As an archangel, Michael has the ability to transport himself, and whoever he is touching, anywhere in the world. However, when he used to do it with me, not only did it feel like having a bucket of water dropped over my head, it turned my stomach. Admittedly, Michael had informed me that the nausea would disappear when I earned my wings, and this was the first time I had been transported since I had earned them, but there was something about this that felt different.
“We’re in the past,” Michael told me, causing me to look up at him with my mouth hanging open. The snow storm raging on around us eased slightly, and he was able to see me clearly. He sighed, though somehow managed to remain patient. “Consider it a vision – a dream.”
“I’m still asleep?” I asked, feeling a little more reassured.
Michael nodded. “Yes. This is still a dream, however I have pulled you into mine in order to take control of it so I might share something with you.”
The snow storm seemed to strengthen in intensity. I looked around, my eyes squinting against the flying snow, trying to examine my surroundings. The thick, angry, black clouds above us did little to aid in guessing what time of day it was as it sent lightning crashing around us, illuminating the area. To the best of my knowledge, we were standing in the middle of a flat ice field, snow coming up to my knees.
“Where are we?” I asked Michael, hugging my arms around myself. Since dying, I haven’t left Louisiana and it had been the height of summer - ridiculously hot and ridiculously humid. Even as summer moved into fall that heat and humidity had remained. Although I was aware of them, they hadn’t affected me, just like the rainstorm hadn’t. Now, with my bare feet buried in snow, an Arctic wind howling around us, I was feeling strangely exposed in the dream clothes I was wearing. In the classroom I had been dressed in a short pair of denim cut-offs and a strappy top – I’d been barefoot in my dream too - and that was exactly what I was wearing now. Yet somehow, I didn’t feel the cold. It was a very, very bizarre sensation. “When are we?”
“Just wait,” Michael muttered, staring up at the clouds.
I glanced at him, surprised to see he was frowning. In fact, he looked like he was bracing himself for something unpleasant. My eyes flicked upwards at the sky which seemed to be locked in battle with itself.
Then, without warning, there was a deafening roar and something came hurtling from the clouds. Whatever it was hit the ground several miles in front of us with such an impact, the dust it sent up in the air mushroomed before rushing towards us. If it wasn’t for Michael holding my hand, it would have sent me flying.
“What’s going on?” I yelled. Vision or not, the rocks, rubble, and dust showering down around me were very disconcerting.
Michael looked down at me and sighed sadly. “It will take some centuries for this dust to settle completely,” he began to explain. As though we were surrounded by a bubble, we started to move. My feet were no longer sunken into the snow. I clutched at Michael’s hand as we hovered about a foot above the ground and we started moving at a steady pace forward towards the point of impact.
“Centuries?” I repeated, watching the dust fly around me. It was like being in the center of a 3D movie.
Michael nodded, straightening. “Eventually, after time, this area will become a lake. A reservoir to others.”
I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose in confusion. “Come again?”
“Today you would know it as the Manicouagan Reservoir in Quebec.”
So, we were in Canada, centuries ago. Unfortunately I had paid about as much attention in history class as I did in my dream version of it. For the life of me I couldn’t think of a single event that resembled this one in Canadian history, or any history, except for, “Was that the meteorite that killed all of the dinosaurs?”
“Just watch,” Michael instructed me softly. We reached the edge of the giant crater, but continued to hover above the gaping hole below us, until we reached another ridge. From here the ground began to rise. I frowned, glancing back at the dirt we had travelled over. “That behind us will eventually become the Manicouagan Reservoir,” Michael explained. “This now, will eventually become known as René-Levasseur Island.”
I’d paid as much attention in geography as I had in history, but I nodded anyway, trying to look like I knew exactly what Michael was talking about. “I see,” I muttered, feeling like I had to say something.
I could sense Michael looking at me and I glanced up to find his head cocked as he studied me, his expression pensive. I returned his gaze with a questioning one of my own, but he merely shook his head and turned his attention to the center of what would be the island. We were continuing to climb, and I had a sudden desire to return to school so that I could study exactly why and how an impact like this would cause a mountain.
As we reached the summit, and the mound of earth began to level, my attention was caught by the pure white snow which blanketed the ground. That didn’t make sense. The only thing that was settling around here was the dust that had been sent up into the air in the first place. I freed one hand from Michael’s grip and crouched down to scoop up a handful of the snow, before standing again. It took me a long moment to realize exactly what it was I had in my palms. Feathers. Pure white, delicate feathers in varying sizes. There was a slight golden hue to them, and I realized that I recognized them, but I couldn’t work out where from.
Clutching some tightly to my chest, I looked up, my attention now distracted by a golden glow radiating in front of me. I squinted trying to see its shape. When it came to me, I couldn’t help but gasp. I was staring at wings. There was something ethereal about them: the feathers seemed more like a collection of shadows outlined on the golden light than they did physical forms. They were breathtaking.
I took a step forward but found some resistance from Michael. He was still holding my hand. I glanced back at him, and was surprised to find that his eyes were closed. There was also something wrong with his breathing. He was… In pain? “Michael? Are you okay?” I asked softly.
His eyes remained closed but his head moved a fraction. “Even after all this time has passed, I still find it hard to be here.”
I frowned. Instead of tugging my hand free, I stepped back and joined Michael at his side. Unsure as to what else I could do, I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. His grip tightened fractionally. In front of me the golden light was dimming, and I could finally see who the wings belonged to. I wasn’t surprised to see it was Michael, I’d been expecting it, but what did surprise me was that the Michael kneeling in front of me was crying.
Despite the fact that between then and now several million years had apparently passed, the Michael in front of me looked identical to the Michael beside me. It seemed that Michael had an accurate memory recall of himself. His face was exquisite, despite how much I tried to deny it. I don’t think there’s a female on the planet who could deny that he was gorgeous. But right now the tears were breaking my heart, and more than anything I wanted to go over there and comfort him.
The light subsided completely and I could finally see what had caused Michael’s tears. In his arms lying limply was another man. He had a head of curly, dark brown hair which hung just below his ears. Even from this angle I could tell that he too was incredibly handsome. I didn’t think it was possible that something could actually be more beautiful than Michael, but Lucifer was, even when he was dying. His eyes were closed and his golden skin was quickly turning an unhealthy gray. The reason for that was obvious. Protruding from his stomach was a sword. At the same speed as his skin was losing its color, so too was the sword turning black.
This was Lucifer. This was the moment Michael had killed his brother. No wond
er he didn’t want to move any closer. I wouldn’t have wanted to either.
I could see that Lucifer was still breathing. Just. His breaths were labored, and I knew that he wouldn’t be alive much longer. Movement switched my attention to Lucifer’s hand. He reached out for his brother’s hand, the one which was placed lightly over the strange armor he was wearing.
The armor was golden and like the wings, had the same translucent quality to it, as though it wasn’t really there. I could see the Onyx tunic Lucifer wore underneath showing through. Even though I could see Michael’s hand resting clearly on it, I wanted to reach out and touch it, just to feel it myself.
Lucifer’s touch jolted Michael’s eyes open, and he looked down at his fallen brother with the great sorrow. “My brother,” Michael muttered, his own hand grabbing Lucifer’s and clutching it tightly. “My dearest brother, why did you have to do that?”
“Because humans weren’t the only thing that He created,” Lucifer rasped. “Even you, brother, acknowledged we both share the same father.”
“We share the same father, but we do not share the same purpose. Even if we did, why can you not see that all life should be regarded as sacred”? Michael asked.
“But I do see that we do not share the same purpose, Michael.” Lucifer disagreed. He cleared his throat, an action which brought up some frothy bubbles of blood. “How is it you are incapable of seeing that it is because we don’t share the same purpose that we are not the same as humans? Their lives may be sacred, but our lives are omnipotent: we are so much more important and powerful than the humans. We should be worshipped. We should be feared.”
Tenderly, Michael wiped away the traces of blood around his brother’s mouth, and let out a deep seated sigh. “Oh brother, I had hoped that you would have stopped this madness before it got this far, before I, my brothers, our brothers had to stand against you. Now, I can only hope that before you die you can forgive me for not stopping all of this from happening.”
