A Visitation of Angels

by Carolyn Haines

  Reginald did a double-take, but he was wise enough to say nothing.

  Ramone spoke. “How much longer before the men get back?”

  “They’re here,” I said. I’d felt the pounding of the horses’ hooves on the hard-packed dirt of the road to Elizabeth’s house. I went outside to catch the reins of Michael’s horse as he came to a stop and leaped to the ground. The man who remained astride of Mariah was broad shouldered and powerful. He threw his right leg over her neck and slid to the ground.

  “You were right. She’s a bonny mare.” He handed me the reins, but he turned back to uncinch the saddle and pull it from her back. He did the same for Michael’s horse. Hefting both saddles, he went to the barn and put them away. A moment later I heard him splash into the rain barrel on the side of the barn. After days of being a prisoner, he could finally clean up.

  I led the horses to the trough to drink, taking care not to let them have too much. I walked them back and forth across the hot yard as the men went inside to get Elizabeth and Callie.

  When the horses had cooled enough to drink their fill, I put them in the paddock and filled the trough. There was grass and plenty of water. Reginald came to stand beside me. “They’ll be fine. Your uncle will have someone here to get both of them tomorrow,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll bring them to Mobile if that’s what you want.”

  He was correct. The horses would be fine. I sighed and turned away. “Are we going to make it?”

  “I wish I knew the answer to that.” He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “This is going to be a hard journey for Elizabeth and she doesn’t look good. She may not make it. You need to be prepared.”

  I swallowed down my bitter denial and went into the house and called her to her bedroom. When she came in, she closed the door. “Where’s Callie?” I asked.

  “She fell asleep so I put her in the back bedroom where it was quieter.” She steadied herself against the bed post. “Thank you for freeing Slater.”

  “It’s Michael you should thank.”

  “I will, but you all played a role. He is innocent. I couldn’t abandon him to those…evil men.”

  I wondered if perhaps we hadn’t drawn him into far worse circumstances, but I didn’t say anything. “The men are outside, ready to go. Let me take a look at that wound.”

  She put her hand over it. “I’m fine.”

  Her behavior gave me pause. “Come on. This is the last chance for me to make sure it’s bandaged securely for the trip. It’s going to be hard, Elizabeth. The roads are little more than woodland trails. We may have to walk, even push the car in places.”

  Hesitating, she finally nodded and slowly came toward me, lifting her blouse so that I could see the bandage Wainwright had put on her after he stitched her up. When I removed the tape and eased the bandage down, I looked up at her in astonishment. “What the hell?”

  “Ever since I had Callie, it’s been like this.”

  I couldn’t believe it, but my eyes weren’t lying. The wound was almost completely healed. All I had to do was cut out the stitches, which I did quickly before they grew completely into her flesh. She didn’t even flinch as I pulled them out one by one. “How?”

  “It’s Callie. She heals me.”

  This was another special gift the infant had. “Is she truly Gabriel’s child?”

  Elizabeth bit her lip. “I don’t know. He said she was. He told me how we made love and she was conceived. He said she was my destiny. Mine and his. That she’s…special. Unique.”

  “You don’t remember the…intimacy?”

  “None of it. I only know what Gabriel told me. He said she would be a special child.”

  “That she is. She definitely has abilities. Could she belong to anyone else?” If there was a way to separate Callie from Gabriel, we had to find it. I had to voice one suspicion. “Could she be Slater McEachern’s child?”

  “No. There’s no one I remember. I just found out back in the fall that I was pregnant. I didn’t know how far along or how it even happened. I had no memory.” She radiated tension. “I had planned to move on from Mission. This is a very bad place. The trail of my brother went cold. No one knew where he’d gone or why. Ramone wasn’t here, so I wanted to look elsewhere. But I was pregnant, and I hoped I could find out who the father was. I didn’t want anything from him, but I wanted to be able to tell Callie when she was older.”

  “You had to sleep with someone to get pregnant. You don’t remember?”

  “Nothing. That’s why it makes sense that she is Gabriel’s. If he’s an angel, there would be no necessity for the physical act to conceive.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Gabriel.”

  More than ever I needed Madam’s wisdom and knowledge. “We have to talk about this, but not here and now. We have to go.”

  “I should stay. I could delay them. I could hold them off by showing how I heal. They would be afraid of me and give you time to take Callie and get away.”

  “Of all the people here, you are the last one who should stay. Callie needs you. I don’t know what role Gabriel plays in all of this, Elizabeth, but he is not good.”

  “I’ve had my suspicions in recent days.” She looked perfectly miserable. “Do you know what he really wants?”

  I weighed telling her the full truth. She deserved to know at least the danger—we could sort the rest when we were safe. “He wants Callie, and that’s the one thing we can never let him have. Let’s go. Everything is packed.”

  A knock came at the door and I opened it to Reginald. “All good?” Anxiety etched his face. Every minute we delayed put us closer to danger.

  “She’s good to travel. Let’s get out of here.”

  I grabbed the bag with diapers and clothes for Callie and headed out the front door and across the porch to the car.

  “Where’s Callie?”

  The cry came from the back bedroom where Callie had been sleeping. Elizabeth sounded distraught. I dropped the bag and ran back into the house, where confusion reigned. The pillows arranged to block Callie safely on the bed were still there, but the baby was gone. McEachern and Michael came into the room and immediately began looking under the bed and any place she might have fallen.

  “The bairn couldn’t disappear into thin air.” McEachern lifted the mattress off the bed. “She’s too young to crawl, but she must have.”

  “Where is she?” Elizabeth looked at me and I realized we both feared the same thing. That Gabriel had somehow managed to slip into the house and steal the baby he claimed was his daughter, a Nephilim child with untold powers.

  Chapter 28

  The pounding of horse hooves came from the paddock area. A wild whinny of terror galvanized me into action. Something was after the horses.

  I grabbed the shotgun, which Reginald had left on the kitchen table, and hurried out the front door. If those damn buzzards were harassing the horses, I would shoot them without hesitation. I didn’t care if they were fallen angels or lost souls trapped in carrion-feeder bodies. I couldn’t take any more. The unrelenting tension of the past few days had me on edge and ready to explode.

  As I left the house, the two horses careened around the paddock area in a terrible panic. I lifted the gun to my shoulders and sighted, still looking for the cause of the horses’ fear. There was nothing to see. The sun was slinking down behind the trees in the west, but there was no sign of Gabriel or his feathered minions. Still, the horses spun and wheeled, showing the whites of their eyes as they scrabbled, too afraid to go out through the open paddock gate and into the fields and woodland pasture.

  Moving stealthily, I headed to the barn. Something had to be in there. Maybe one of the buzzards had gone to roost so it could watch over us and report back to its master. Still holding the gun to my shoulder, I slowly advanced. I’d never shot at anything with the intention of hurting it. The idea of killing any animal was repugnant to me. These buzzards, though, were not mortal creatures. I’d come to
accept this. They played around in the wickedness that festered in Mission. Just as Lucais Wilkins and his thugs did. I didn’t know how or why they’d chosen to serve evil, I only knew they had. Even to me, my thoughts sounded delusional and twisted, but I knew the truth. I saw it. And I would do whatever was necessary to defeat it.

  The light in the barn was dim as I eased through the cracked door. With the horses outside, there should not have been anything alive in the barn. Whatever was in there, I had to handle it by myself because everyone was busy searching for a lost child—an infant I needed to also be looking for. I stepped past the first stall and deeper into the barn. Outside the horses continued to spin, crying out in fear and desperation. They’d injure themselves if I didn’t put a stop to this.

  Sunlight filtered into the barn in shafts where the roof and walls had holes. Dust motes danced in the light, oblivious to the pounding of my heart or the presence of danger. The smell of hay was sweet and strong. Elizabeth had put a small stack of freshly cut grass in a corner for Mariah. I approached the hay with fear. Anything could be hidden behind it. A quick search revealed only empty corners.

  There seemed nothing out of the ordinary in the barn. I glanced up in the hay loft, but the area I could see was empty. I could detect no movement up there.

  Suddenly a strange sound came to me from beyond the stalls and tack room. It sounded like a swarm of flies buzzing. The noise swelled until it was loud enough to drown out any other sound. The smell of decomposing meat hit me at the same time. The buzzards had dragged something dead into the barn. They were likely feasting on it in the far corner of the barn, hidden in darkness. They would be easier to shoot if they were all clustered together. One foot in front of the other, gun at the ready, I continued on.

  A terrible, terrible thought came to me. Callie was missing. What if those vile buzzards had come in the window and taken her? They were big. Big enough to lift a fifteen-pound infant. Callie was so helpless, so dependent on others to keep her safe. Those birds were big enough to kill her with beaks and talons. Normal buzzards were not predators, but these were not normal birds.

  My breath hitched repeatedly as I pushed on. I didn’t want to look, but I had to. I had to. I couldn’t turn and run away as every inch of me begged to do. There was no room in my life now for cowardice or fear. I tried to think about what I was doing as a scene in a book, as something safely within the pages of a story I would one day write. My mind wouldn’t hold onto that fantasy. It skittered away like a rodent and I was left with hurtling images of what I was going to find when I made it to the flies.

  Beneath the disgusting buzzing of the flies emerged another sound. This one was guttural, the sound of something still alive, gurgling to an end. Was it possible the buzzards had Callie and she was still alive?

  “Callie!” I rushed forward, unable to stop myself. “Callie!”

  I forced myself past the last stall to the back of the barn. The area was very dark with no sunlight. The drone of the flies had reached cyclone pitch and the smell gagged me. “Callie?” I wished for a lamp or lantern, something to cast light into the dark shadows of the barn.

  I couldn’t see, but I forced myself forward, shuffling my feet to be sure I didn’t step on the infant. Something scuttled along the floor of the barn and the smell grew worse. The gurgling sound continued, but it was no longer desperate. It was almost musical now.

  “Whatever you are in here, I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later.” I pulled the hammer on the shotgun back. It was hard to miss with a shotgun. I aimed high and pulled the trigger. The kick almost knocked me down, but I managed to keep my balance. The blast knocked a chunk out of the side of the barn. Dying sunlight flooded in at a golden slant, revealing a scene that hit me like a kick in my gut.

  Callie lay on the floor of the barn, surrounded by at least nine of the buzzards. They walked around her counter clockwise as if they were performing some kind of ritual. They made a gruesome hissing sound—the sound they made when they feasted on something dead. Leaned against the wall was someone—I couldn’t clearly see. He was outside the golden circle of light, but it was a person. Or had once been.

  Callie turned her head to face me and a cry escaped my lips. Her eyes were pure white stones. She turned toward me as if she were blind, unseeing. But she gurgled and waved her arms, calling to me. Welcoming me.

  The buzzards stopped moving and turned, all at once, to face me. I lifted the shotgun. I wanted to kill them. To blast them back into the hellish afterlife they’d come from, but I didn’t. The shot spread of the gun was wide and powerful, and I couldn’t risk hitting Callie or the person against the wall—if he was even still alive. The body looked as if all life had been sucked from it and an empty sack left behind, forgotten.

  I took a step toward Callie, and the birds closed rank, preventing me from reaching the infant. They watched me.

  “You bastards, I’m going to kill you.” I felt an insane urge to blast them, despite the danger to Callie, and I realized that something was trying to gain control of me. The same something that fed off and changed my dreams. Gabriel. He was somewhere nearby, manipulating this scene—and me. I couldn’t let him.

  The smell of something rotting hit me hard and I turned away to gag. I was barely able to control the impulse to vomit, and when I turned back to the scene, my heart almost stopped. The body against the wall had started to move. It twitched and jerked and moaned. Before I could even step back, it dropped on all fours.

  I remembered the dream of the characters from a novel, how one of them had turned into a beast on all fours, gamboling about, snapping at the air and her own flesh. The man did the same, his back arching in a way that would have snapped a normal spine.

  The thing came toward Callie, who cooed and kicked her arms and legs, completely oblivious to the danger that was coming for her. I tried to move forward, tried to get between Callie and the thing on all fours that scrabbled toward her like something half dead but unwilling to find a grave.

  “Stay away from her.” My voice was weak, pathetic, even to my ears. The beast shifted its focus to me, and in doing so, the light from the hole I’d blasted in the wall fell on its face.

  “Ramone!” Elizabeth’s brother looked at me with such malicious wickedness that I felt as if I gazed upon the lord of hell himself. He opened his mouth and his tongue poked out, a black and rotting organ.

  “Callie,” he said in a voice so raspy it hurt my ears. “My little Callie.”

  “Stay away from her.” My threats were empty and I knew it.

  “She’s mine, now isn’t she?” Ramone’s grin was cruel.

  “She is not yours. She will never be yours.” I talked a good game for a woman who couldn’t move her body an inch. “Elizabeth and I will find you and destroy you if you touch that child.”

  “Elizabeth knows she’s mine. Elizabeth wants me to take her.”

  “You lying piece of filth.” I had to think of something to do, something that would break the spell that held my body rigid. If he picked up Callie, he could disappear with her and no one would know where to look.

  “She’s mine and she’s a god. She’ll rule heaven and earth before this is over.”

  “Where is Ramone?” The creature in front of me might be using Ramone’s body, but it was not the brother Elizabeth had come looking for.

  “Gone.” He rose to his feet, manipulating his joints and stretching as if the spine-snapping postures I’d just witnessed were nothing. “He’s gone for good.”

  “Why, Gabriel? Why are you doing this?”

  “It’s a war, and you know it. The only war worth fighting. You delude yourselves into thinking that the wars humans wage are about good and evil.” He laughed like a deep rumble. “So foolish. It’s always money for you humans. Always greed. The war that must be fought is in front of you now. You think Lucais Wilkins is the enemy, but he does my bidding.”

  I didn’t completely understand what he was saying, but I
comprehended enough to know that Callie and Elizabeth were in terrible danger. Gabriel was not going to let us go.

  “I’m taking the child. She belongs with me.” Ramone went toward the baby and the buzzards scuttled out of his presence.

  As he leaned down to pick up Callie, I aimed the shotgun into the roof of the barn and pulled the trigger on the second barrel. Shot flew and struck the top of the barn. Pieces of roof rained down on Ramone. It slowed him, but it wouldn’t stop him.

  More light illuminated the interior of the barn, but that wasn’t my goal. I heard running footsteps. Help was coming!

  “Hurry!” I called out. “In the barn. He has Callie. Help!”

  The big barn door creaked open and more light flooded in. I turned to see Michael in the barn aisle, running hard toward me. When I looked back at Callie, she was alone on the floor of the barn. She was no longer cooing and her eyes had returned to normal. Ramone slumped against the back wall, blood trickling from his head. I found I could move my feet and I ran toward Callie while Michael rushed to assist Ramone.

  “Is he hurt?” I couldn’t remember shooting him.

  “He’s out, and there’s a gash, but he’s breathing steadily. I’ll get Reginald to help me put him in the car. We have to go. What were you doing with Callie out here?”

  “I found her. And Ramone. It was Gabriel, possessing Ramone. He wants the baby, and he can manipulate the things I see. Or think I see.” I glanced at Ramone, who was unconscious still.

  Michael rose to his feet. “Of course. If we’re going to make a run for it, we have to go now. Right now. Send McEachern and Reginald here to help me move Ramone. We can’t leave him.”

  I started to tell him what I’d seen, to warn him, but Michael waved me on. “Go! They won’t be far behind Gabriel.”

  Chapter 29

  By the time we’d loaded the still-unconscious Ramone into the backseat of the car and had everyone else squeezed in, the buzzards were back. They had found a roost in the branches of a wild cherry tree that was dying. There had to be a dozen of them, their ugly heads and necks naked-looking in the dying light of the day.