Pudgy fell backwards out of his seat in an attempt to get up and help his fellow officer. “What’s wrong, man?! Holy shit!”
“My hand!” Moustache screamed. “Oh fuck, my hand!”
He looked through the bars then, and locked gaze with Celia, who stared right back at him, unblinking, unwavering, lips still moving with the strange sounds and words.
Moustache panicked, and in a final desperate move, pulled with all of his force against his frozen hand. The majority of his palm flesh remained grafted to the bar, and he pulled away with a handful of blood and torn skin flapping wildly as he writhed in pain, grasping the wrist with his good hand.
“Oh, fuck!” he yelled, over and over.
Tears were streaming from his face as he doubled over and slowly dropped to his knees. Bloody handprints were soon smeared across the cold cement floor.
Pudgy wasted no time in scurrying out the door of the lockup area, screaming for help as he went.
His face streaked with tears of pain, Moustache looked up to watch his friend go, and then turned his gaze on Celia. She stood up from the bench seat, The Book open, floating impossibly above the palm of her left hand. She walked toward the cell bars and the writhing, moaning cop. The fluorescent bulb buzzed violently and then popped as she moved beneath it, casting the cell into darkness.
“Please, no. Please...”
Celia continued to smile as she reached out her right hand and grasped the bar that had taken some of the cop’s flesh. A second mass of ice crystals formed across its surface as she held it and then, with a quick motion, she snapped the bar at its center. Like a broken icicle, it crashed to the floor, shattering as it struck. To the bar next to it, she did the same.
“Oh God, help me,” Moustache groaned, trying to push himself across the floor with his feet, trying to escape the quiet, smiling thirteen year-old. “Please, God, no...”
Celia walked slowly to the fallen cop and, before he could scream, touched one finger of her right hand to his chest.
His eyes wide and bloodshot, the cop shuttered and blinked several times. He tried to cough, but could not. His body shuddered, and then he closed his eyes and was gone.
Still smiling, Celia stood, turned, and walked over to the cubbies were she retrieved and donned her jacket. She closed The Book and placed it in the inner pocket and then headed for the door.
She stopped.
A tiny, almost imperceptible voice in the very back of her mind was calling out. It was a voice that said she had forgotten something. She looked around the cell until her eyes rested on the shiny red apple, sitting quietly upon the concrete floor. She strode over, picked it up, and jammed it in her pocket.
The police station had burst to life. People yelled frantically and she could still hear Pudgy screaming for help. A siren had been set off somewhere in the building.
The first cop to come around the corner was an older Hispanic woman, her gun drawn and ready. She clearly hadn’t been expecting someone to be right around the corner, and she collided with Celia. The young girl didn’t budge as the older cop staggered backwards. Celia wrapped her fingers around the outstretched gun, and steam burst from its surface. The woman tried to pull the trigger, but the gun crumbled to pieces. Shards of frozen crystal tinkled across the floor.
Celia stepped past her and proceeded toward the station exit at the end of the long hallway. As she walked, the fluorescent bulbs above her popped and died, one by one, as if her passing demanded darkness. Celia, still smiling, moved on.
The second cop to approach met with a worse fate. He too sought to end the situation with a gun. He squeezed the trigger, and the bullet screamed out of the chamber toward the advancing girl.
Celia stopped.
She raised a hand.
The bullet’s path came to a sudden end as icicles shot from walls on either side, icy strands holding the lead shell in place. The force traveled back along the strands where it met the walls, resulting in hairline cracks that appeared in the cement and threw spouts of dust into the air.
Celia lowered her hand, and the icicles broke off and dropped, taking the bullet with them. The cop, astonished but determined, charged the girl with his fists, the gun dropping to the floor beside him.
Celia reached out a palm and smacked him in the chest. She could feel the water in his organs turning to expanding, cell-shredding ice. The cop hit the ground in an instant, clutching at his heart. His life faded away in seconds.
As she neared the end of the long hallway, an older man, white-haired with a beard, burst from his office wielding a shotgun aimed at Celia’s left side. Without even looking at him, she raised her left hand, and a wall of ice appeared between them, trapping the cop in his office. The shotgun went off, and the shell embedded itself in the glassy barrier. An intricate web of cracks shot out in every direction from the bullet’s entry point.
Celia exited through the front door.
The last fluorescent bulb in the hallway–the one right above the exit sign–popped out. The light-sensor on the exit sign saw darkness and it came to life, shrouding the hallway in electronic red as the door closed behind a quiet, unassuming girl, who now knew where she must go.
22
TRENT WALKED TOWARD THE GLASS kitchen door, beyond which the black-eyed angels stood, staring. As he approached, one of them reached out and opened the door.
“Whoa!” Ramón shouted at the angel. “You just step back there, buddy.”
Trent asked, “I thought they couldn’t enter?”
“I said there were rules, not laws. They’re not forced to follow ‘em, but they should.” He glared at the angel, who smiled and let go of the door handle.
The angel took a step back from the door. “My apologies.” His voice came out steady and unnaturally pleasant. “We simply wish to talk with Mr. Hawkins.”
“Bullshit,” replied Ramón. “Why don’t you go ahead and take a few more steps back. I’d say twenty yards’d be good.”
The two blonds looked at each other, shrugged, and then walked backwards. They stopped twenty yards from the door. The drifting snow swirled about the base of their long, gray coats.
Trent looked at Ramón, seeking some sort of acknowledgment of his next steps.
“Go ahead,” Ramón answered. “It’s your job now, not mine. Best you learn how to deal with guys like this.”
“We’ve already met once today. Fucking cocky angels.”
“Minor angels. Cherubim. Minions, really.” Ramón raised his voice to make sure the angels could hear him over the howling winds. “They’re just low-rank spooks, sent to give humans a good scare. But don’t underestimate ‘em too much. They can kill just the same, though taking out mortals is generally frowned upon.”
Trent glanced at the angels. One of them smiled disingenuously. “Mr. Hawkins is not entirely a mortal,” shouted the angel, his voice cutting weirdly through the storm winds, as though it had some special privilege to do so. “He is tainted, like the girl.”
At the mention of Celia, Trent rushed the door, but found himself caught by Ramón’s outstretched arm.
“Whoa, there. Hold up, son.”
“They took Celia,” Trent said through gritted teeth. Then, over Ramón’s barrier, he shouted, “What the fuck did you do with her, you bastards?”
The other angel, who had been quiet up to this point, raised an eyebrow. “We simply set her on her rightful path. The Prophecy must be fulfilled.” His gaze drifted from Trent to Ramón. “You know this as well as we, Ramiel Doom-Sayer.”
Ramón shook his head and grinned. “You’ve read it all wrong. All you managed to do is ruin a little girl’s life, and trash an old man’s fate. And you call me the ‘Doom-Sayer.’“ He removed his arm from Trent’s path, implying that the wait was over. “You want to deal with my boy here, then go right ahead. But I think you’re making a big mistake.”
Both angels grinned maliciously. “No mistake, Ramiel. Zamagiel has used his last favor with the Pri
nce. Whether he wipes this place clean or not is irrelevant to us. The Bringer of Nightmares is already upon this coil. All that matters now is the ascension of the girl.”
“Not if I get to her first,” growled Trent, as he took his first steps out in the swirling blizzard.
Both angels pulled gleaming silver daggers from inside their coats. The one on the left spoke: “That, Mr. Hawkins, is what we are here to prevent.”
Trent glanced back at Ramón, who made a head gesture that indicated that now was the time. He put a hand on the glass door. Before closing it, he said, “Remember, minor angels. Nothing to worry about.” Then, he shut the door and walked over to the counter to refill his coffee cup.
Trent turned to face the angels standing twenty yards away. Between them, intermittent blasts of snow and ice whirled through the dark night. He was reminded of a scene in an old western. He half-expected frozen tumbleweeds.
“Angels, huh?” he ventured.
“Yes,” the one on the left responded.
“Where’s your halos? Or did you forget ‘em?”
The one on the right smiled. “We can’t let you continue this course of action, Mr. Hawkins.”
“I don’t think that’s your choice, anymore.”
The angel on the left replied, “This is a war that has been long in the coming. And it is time for it to begin.”
The one on the right picked up where his twin left off. “The child must become the Frozen Queen. And then the War will begin. If you interfere–”
“–then the war will be postponed.”
“And we cannot let that happen again.”
Trent raised an eyebrow. “Then why don’t you just start it yourself?”
The angel on the left frowned. “We can’t. There are rules.”
“Rules,” Trent repeated, nodding.
“And the demons refuse to fight. They’re content with the level of control they have gained over your kind.”
“I thought we had free will.”
“Free will?” The angel on the left shouted, increasing his volume to overcome the howling winds. “Have you seen this place?” He raised both arms and gestured to the sky. “You watch television that someone else has made for you, read news that someone else has written, eat what someone else has produced. Every day, you invent new medicine to keep yourselves alive even longer, apart from the Light of God that awaits you in death. You pretend that God doesn’t exist, or that He is just a metaphor. You live your lives by rules written on stone tablets, by letters in books and words on the screen. Those who consider themselves among the faithful are little more than script-readers, content to pay their dues to a self-made club, and in return receive metal icons–a golden calf–to display on their vehicles, a symbol not of God, but of ignorance and blind faith in a God that they no longer understand!”
The angel on the right finished the tirade. “What sort of ‘free will’ do you believe that the race of Man has, Mr. Hawkins?”
Trent considered this for a moment. When he had been a rich gambler, he had lived by chance; he had lived the life that everyone else had expected of him. He had watched old friends disappear in the shadows behind the glaring lights of his own fame and fortune. And for what? For a feeling of control in his life that amounted to little more than blind faith that the life he was living was just the way it was, the right path.
And then it had all fallen away, leaving him broke, tired and dead inside. But, through it all, Susan had hung on tight–the one person who refused to give up on him. Susan, who had always known that he could choose to live differently, who had known that the money and the luck did not make the man. He balled his fists, remembering the final look in her eyes as she fell limp into his arms.
“I have free will!” he shouted back, his voice strong and loud despite the screaming blizzard.
He gave the angels the finger, then turned his back to the angels and headed through Ramón’s frozen, dead garden, toward the archway and his waiting Ducati. He felt both pride and cold death in his heart. He knew that if he did this work tonight, ended Zamagiel’s foul work, that his path would be one of vengeance, of retribution, of divine wrath. He felt as Ramón had described, divinely inspired to attend to God’s wishes, no matter who might stand in his way, demon or angel alike. This was his path now. This was the way forward.
He was only steps from the bike when the angels hit him. He tumbled to the snow-covered ground, twisting his body to look up into the unblinking eyes of his attackers, both wielded their mercurial knives menacingly. The three of them grappled as they attempted to pin Trent to the ground. They were strong, and he realized that he wouldn’t be able to fight off their murderous intent for long.
He thought about what Ramón had said: Cherubim. Nothing to worry about.
With an outstretched hand he grabbed a stone from the edge of Ramón’s garden and brought it up in an arc and smashed it into the head of the angel on his right. The flesh and bone crunched soft like any other. Angels, maybe, but mortal bodies still. The blond tumbled backwards and came to rest in a crouched, knee-down position, head oozing blood onto the snow and his gray suit jacket whipping violently in the blizzard gale.
The angel on the left continued to stab at him, but Trent found that he had the strength to deal with one of them at a time. He threw the angel off and it slid onto its back in the snow, a few feet away. Trent scrambled to his feet.
Both of the angels glared at him, their mouths twisted into sneers. The three of them faced off. Snow and ice and the distant sounds of emergency sirens screamed in the dark. Trent analyzed his opponents–two men, medium build, about six feet tall.
Mortal bodies, he thought. Mortal goddamn bodies.
He made up his mind and rushed suddenly backwards, retreating back through the stone archway that marked the entrance to Ramón’s garden. Both angels followed. The intense feeling of deathly calm welled up once more in Trent’s chest and he could feel the miasma seeping over him. He wasn’t sure if his plan would work, but he would damn well give it a try, and as the first angel passed under the arch Trent tensed and summoned the painful chest-pounding sensation that always made him wonder if he was having a heart attack. Except now he didn’t wonder anymore. He knew what was happening. Walking doom, he thought. He gritted his teeth, yelled, and felt a black rush of emptiness pour out of him, tearing invisibly across the landscape toward the sneering cherubim.
A sudden gust of blizzard wind descended suddenly upon the yard, bringing a burst of snow that blew the gray Stetson off Trent’s head and blinded the advancing angel with an unexpected spray of ice. He clawed at his face to wipe the snow away, finally cleared it, and looked up just in time to see the archway crumbling down upon him. The heavy stones crashed into his skull, shoulders, arms and chest and pinned him fast to the ground.
Trent knew the angel was not dead, but in a mortal body he only had so much strength. Trent expected the heavy stones would keep him busy for a while. He turned to face the other cherubim, feeling strangely naked without the hat atop his head.
“You can’t stop this war, Trent!” the angel shouted. “It must come to pass! This feud must be settled! Leave the girl be! Let her find her true fate!”
Trent began advancing on the shouting angel. As he walked past the fallen archway, he absently kicked a small stone onto the pile.
“No. Not on my watch,” he shouted back. “The demons might have us under their control, but you–” He aimed a finger at the angel, who took hesitant steps backwards. “You and your little friends are jealous. You’re nothing but minions, cherubim, the bottom of the ladder, and you always will be, won’t you? You want a war because you think it will bring back the days in which Heaven ruled supreme. But if God wanted Heaven to be the ultimate law, He would have kept things that way. He didn’t give us all free will so we could use it to kiss His ass. He gave it to us so we could choose our own path, make our own choices. His glory is in our choices, not your Heaven, not your Prophecies, n
ot any of that.”
The angel trembled. With a sudden, snap decision, its long coat burst open in the back and wings unfurled, yellow and white feathers shimmering in the glow of Ramón’s porch light. The angel took to the air, flapping twice to push itself into the sky.
“You won’t go to Heaven when you die, Trent Hawkins,” it screamed from above. “You won’t go anywhere.”
“Die?” Trent laughed as he stared up at the angel silhouetted against the snow-shrouded neon lights of the city. He could see that the cherubim’s all-black eyes were filled with fear. Trent snarled. “I’m already dead.”
With a thought, he infused the angel’s body with the foulest of luck, blackened its fate, and another massive gust of storm wind swept across the yard, bringing sprays of snow drift with it, an unseen attacker aimed at the hovering angel. The gust slammed into the angel’s wings, crumpled and twisted them in an instant, sending the creature back down to the ground. Its flailing body punched through the monk statue in Ramón’s garden. The monk’s snowy cap burst off in a cloud of powder and the monk itself crashed backwards onto some flagstones, where it shattered into a heap of rubble with the angel at the center.
Trent strode over to the broken angel, his boots crunching in the snow. He stood above the moaning man and looked down. The angel looked up, utter sadness in its black eyes. Trent felt guilty, but only for a moment.
With a quick right hook, he caught the angel in the side of the jaw. The man clutched at his bloody face and curled up beneath some of the cold-withered garden plants.
Trent reached down and picked up the silvery dagger. He marveled at it for a moment; he had never seen anything quite like it. It had a perfectly polished blade and an ornate, gilded handle and even the slightest motion made it sing quietly. He glanced at his haggard reflection in the mirror-perfect metal and then slid it into his belt. He found his cowboy hat, replaced it atop his head and walked out of Ramón’s yard.
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