Clumsy, growled David to himself as he straightened. He’d been doing so well.
He took another step toward the main road before he realized someone was standing in his way. The light in the alley was lower than that on the main street and at first the figure was nothing more than a fuzzy silhouette in David’s far-from-sober vision. And then the shape moved toward him, sharpening, and David frowned.
It was the young man from the corner booth. And the street corner, David realized. He was dressed in dark jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. He barely looked old enough to drink.
“Can I help you, kid?” asked David.
The stranger continued toward him with slow, measured steps, and David found himself retreating, even as he said, “Hey, I’m talking to you.”
The young man reached the burned door, and stopped.
“The son of man,” he said softly, bringing his hand to the wood, “shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all that offend.” His hand fell away from the door. “And cast them into a furnace of fire.”
The stranger’s eyes glittered in the dark.
“What the hell are you talking about?” said David.
“David Lane,” said the stranger.
David’s blood ran cold. “How do you know my name?”
“You have sinned against God.”
“Who are you?”
A knife appeared in the stranger’s hand. “One of his angels.”
David stumbled backward several feet, but his shoulders fetched up against a trash bin, and before he could get away, the stranger was there. “Wait, please—”
He didn’t get the chance to finish. The knife slid between David’s ribs. Pain, bright and hot—hotter than anything he’d felt in 297 days—tore through him as his knees buckled.
He grasped at the stranger’s arm as he sank, tightening his fingers around the man’s sleeve. The fabric burned instantly, and the flesh beneath began to char, and the stranger gritted his teeth, but didn’t let go. David’s grip began to weaken, until his fingers finally slipped from the stranger’s arm. The knife slid free. Everything got quiet. Even the sound of his own body falling forward to the street seemed far away. He felt the cold then, not blistering as it had been beneath the snow, but steady, spreading through him as he lay there.
Warm up, he thought, but his hands rested uselessly against the pavement. Warm up, he willed, but only the cold was there to meet him. The cold and the quiet. They took hold and dragged him down, and the last thing David saw was the stranger crossing himself, the ruined flesh of his arm knitting back together.
And then the darkness came, and buried David Lane in a blanket of ash.
Copyright (C) 2013 by V.E. Schwab
Art copyright (C) 2013 by Victo Ngai
V. E. Schwab, Warm Up
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