Zeke released the smoke from his lungs in a billowy cloud. The cigarette was finished and he threw the filter to the floor. He wanted another and considered asking a neighbor to spot him one until he remembered that he already owed cigarettes to several people in the building. He would need to drown the urge to smoke.
What would I say to Him—to the Creator? he wondered as he picked up the bottle. “I’m sorry for messing things up,” he muttered, and had some whiskey.
He let the bottle rest against his stomach and gazed up at the ceiling, concentrating on a water stain that reminded him of Italy.
Was saying he was sorry even enough?
Zeke dug through the thick haze of memory to find what it was like to be in His presence. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth of his recollection flood over him. If only there was a way to feel that again—to stand before the Father of all things and beg His forgiveness.
He opened his eyes and brought his fingers to his face. His cheeks were wet with tears.
“Pathetic,” he grumbled, disgusted with his show of emotion. “Tears aren’t going to do me a bit of good,” he said aloud as he brought his bottle up to drink. He leaned his head back and swallowed with powerful gulps. He belched loudly, a low rippling sound that seemed to shake the rafters. “Should’a thought how sorry I’d be before I started handing out makeup tips,” he said sarcastically.
The smell suddenly hit him. Smoke. And not the kind he desperately craved. Something was burning.
He rose from his bed and walked barefoot across the room to the door. If Fat Mary down the hall was using her hotplate again, they’d all be in trouble. The woman could burn water, he mused as he opened the door to the hallway.
A blast of scalding air hit him square and he stumbled back, arms up to protect his face. The hall was on fire and quickly filling with smoke.
Panic gripped him, not for his own safety, for he was almost sure the flames could not kill him, but for the safety of the other poor souls who called the Osmond their home.
He stumbled out into the hallway, his hand over his mouth, a bit of protection from the noxious clouds swirling in the air. There was a fire alarm at the end of the hallway, he remembered. If he could get to it, he might have a chance to save some lives.
Zeke pressed himself to the wall, feeling his way along its length.
He could hear the cries of those trapped inside their rooms by the intense heat.
The smoke was growing thicker. He got down on all fours and began to crawl. The wood floor was becoming hot to the touch, blistering the skin on his hands and knees as he moved steadily forward. He couldn’t be far now.
Zeke looked up, his seared and tearing eyes trying to discern the shape of the alarm on the wall—and that was when he saw them. There were two of them, slowly making their way through the smoke and fire.
He tried to yell, but all he could manage was a series of lung-busting coughs.
The smoke seemed to part and they emerged to stand over him, flaming swords at the ready, wings slowly fanning the flames higher.
“Hello, Grigori,” said the angel whom Zeke fearfully recognized as one who had helped to sever his wings so long ago.
“We’ve come to tie up loose ends,” said the other.
They both smiled predatorily at him.
And Zeke came to the horrible realization that the fire was the least of his worries.
Aaron pulled his car into the driveway of his home on Baker Street a little after nine o’clock. He switched off the ignition and wondered if he had the strength to pull himself from the car and into the house.
To say that he was exhausted was an under-statement. It was the first time he had been back to the veterinary hospital since his language skills had—how had Zeke put it?—blossomed.
It had been insane from the minute he rushed through the door, barely on time. The docs had been running late, and the waiting area was filled with a wide variety of dogs and cats, each with its own problem. There had even been a parrot with a broken wing and a box turtle with some kind of shell fungus.
He had immediately set to work, making sure that everybody had done the proper paperwork and apologizing for the delays.
And it was as if the animals could sense his ability to communicate with them. As he attempted to carry on conversations with their owners, the pets tried everything in their power to get his attention. A beagle puppy named Lily rambled on and on about her favorite ball. Bear, a black Labrador-shepherd mix, sadly told him that he couldn’t run very fast anymore because his hips hurt. A white Angora cat called Duchess yowled pathetically from her transport cage that she felt perfectly fine and didn’t need to see a doctor. A likely story, Aaron mused, and one probably shared by the majority of waiting animals.
It was constant: Someone or something was yammering at him from the moment he had walked into the place. Aaron wasn’t sure if it was scientifically possible, but he was convinced that his head was going to explode. All he could think of was his skull as a balloon filled with too much air. Bang! No more balloon.
Aaron forced himself from the car with a tired grunt. He would have been perfectly happy to have spent the remainder of the night in the car—but he was hungry. He got his back-pack from the trunk and began the pained journey to the house.
He smiled as he recalled how he had prevented his brain from detonating at work. The animals had been carrying on, Michelle had him running back and forth to the kennels for pickups and drop-offs, the docs wanted their exam rooms cleaned so they could bring in the next patient. And there he was, on the verge of blowing up, when he thought of her. He thought about Vilma and a kind of calm passed over him. The chattering of the patients became nothing more than droning background noise, and he was able to finish out the evening with a minimum of stress. Just thinking of her smiling face, coupled with what she had said in the car—it was enough to calm him and release the internal pressure.
Maybe I’ll e-mail her after I eat, he thought with a grin.
There was a menacing rumble above him and he looked up. Thick gray clouds like liquid metal undulated across the night sky, on the verge of completely blotting out any trace of the moon and stars.
Looks like we’re in for a pretty big storm, he thought as he turned his attention to finding the back-door key.
The scream from inside was bloodcurdling.
Aaron hurriedly opened the door and shouldered his way into the house.
“Mom?” he called out. He dropped his bookbag on the floor.
There was another scream, high pitched and filled with terror. It was Stevie, Aaron was sure of it. He tore down the hallway in search of his foster parents and brother.
“Mom!” he called again as he raced through the kitchen. “Dad!”
More screams.
He found his family in the living room, huddled on the floor in front of the television, which showed only static. Lori tightly gripped the thrashing Stevie in her arms, rocking him back and forth, cooing to the child that everything was going to be fine. Gabriel paced beside them, his tail rigid, hackles up.
“What’s wrong with him?” Aaron asked. He had never seen Stevie this agitated.
“Theycom!” the child screamed over and over again. “Theycom! Theycom! Theycom!” His eyes rolled to the back of his head, foamy saliva bubbled from the corners of his mouth.
“He’s been like this for half an hour,” Tom said, panic in his voice. He stroked his son’s sweat-dampened hair. “We don’t know what he’s trying to say!”
“Theycom! Theycom! Theycom!” Stevie bellowed as he struggled to be free of his mother’s arms.
“I…I think we should call nine-one-one,” Lori stammered. There were tears in her eyes when she looked at Aaron and her husband for support.
Tom rubbed a tremulous hand across his face. “I don’t know…I just don’t know. Maybe if we wait a little longer…”
Aaron turned from his parents to find Gabriel no longer pacing, but standing perfectl
y still. The dog looked up at the ceiling and sniffed the air. He began to growl.
“Gabriel? What’s wrong, boy? What do you smell?”
A crack of thunder shook the home from roof to foundation. The lights flickered briefly, and then the power quit altogether, plunging the room into darkness.
“Theycom! Theycom!” the child continued to scream inconsolably at the top of his lungs.
“Something bad,” Gabriel said with a menacing edge to his bark. “That’s what Stevie is trying to say. Something bad is coming.”
chapter ten
There was another rumble of thunder and the windows in the living room rattled ominously. Aaron began to experience the same overpowering sense of panic he had felt in the guidance office when coming face-to-face with Camael.
“We need to get out of here,” he said, gazing up at the ceiling. “We…we should get Stevie to the hospital right away.”
Gabriel’s words echoed through Aaron’s head. “Something bad is coming.”
“I don’t know, Aaron,” Lori said. “He seems to be calming down.” She looked at her child; there was uncertainty and fear in her eyes.
Stevie’s struggles were indeed waning. He had screamed himself hoarse but still tried to squeak out his warning.
Tom leaned down and kissed the boy’s head. “I’ve never seen him like this before, maybe Aaron’s right. Maybe we should take him—just in case.”
“Good, we’ll take my car,” Aaron said quickly as he and Gabriel moved into the darkened kitchen.
“He doesn’t have any socks on,” he heard his mother say behind him. “Let me go upstairs and get his sneakers and socks. I should probably bring his coat, too, just in case…”
“We don’t have time for that, Mom,” Aaron barked. His panic was intensifying. “We have to get out of here right now.”
Every fiber of his being screamed for him to get away, to leave everything and run as fast as he could into the night. It took every ounce of his self-control not to leave his parents and little brother behind. Nothing would make him do that, in spite of what his senses were telling him. After so many tumultuous years in the foster care system, the Stanleys were the only people, the only family, who’d stuck it out with him, showering him with love, and more importantly, acceptance….
His foster dad came up from behind. “Take it easy, pal. He’ll be okay. There’s no reason to get crazy with your mother. I’ll get his shoes and we’ll be out of here in no time.”
“No time,” Gabriel said suddenly, staring at the kitchen door.
Clack!
They all jumped at the sudden sound as the deadbolt on the kitchen door slid sideways as if moved by some invisible force.
“What the hell is that?” Tom asked, trying to get around his son.
“Go,” Aaron said forcefully. “Take Mom and Stevie and go out the front door.”
The door began to slowly open with the high-pitched whine that Tom had been threatening to put oil to since the summer, and three men entered on a powerful gust of wind. Aaron’s senses were blaring and he winced in pain from their razor-sharp intensity. He knew what these men were. Not men at all.
Angels.
He was enthralled by the way they moved. They didn’t so much walk into the house as glide, as though on wheels or a conveyor belt.
“What is this?” Tom Stanley hollered, pushing Aaron out of the way. “Get the hell out of my house before I beat the livin’—”
It happened quickly. Tom advanced, fists clenched, intent on defending his home and family. Fire suddenly leaped from an invader’s hands and his father stumbled back, covering his eyes as he fell to the linoleum floor.
Aaron couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was just like his dream. The three invaders were holding swords. Swords made of fire.
“Call the police!” his father shouted as he struggled to stand.
Aaron ran to help him. “Get up! You have to get Mom and Stevie out of here.”
One of the invaders stalked slowly toward them, his face eerily illuminated by the light of his weapon. There was something unnerving about the way he looked—the way they looked. They were deathly pale, almost luminescent in their whiteness, and their features were perfectly symmetrical—too perfect. Aaron felt as though he were looking at mannequins come to life.
“Do we frighten you, monkey?” the invader asked in a voice like nails running down a blackboard. “Does our presence make you tremble?”
“Get away from them!” Lori screamed from the doorway to the living room.
In her arms she held the limp and nearly catatonic Stevie, his eyes large and glassy, like saucers. Gabriel stood by them, tensed, preventing her from entering the kitchen.
Aaron got his father to his feet and pushed him back toward the living room. The stranger raised his flaming sword above his head. Wings dappled with spots of brown dramatically unfolded from his back. Aaron and his father froze, awestruck by the sight of something they once believed to be purely of fiction—of myth.
The angel prepared to strike them down. “We are the Powers—the harbingers of your doom. Look upon us in awe!”
The blade of fire began its descent, and Aaron stepped in front of his father to take the hit. Suddenly there was a flurry of movement and a yellow-white blur passed over him with an unearthly grace, landing in front of the sword-wielding attacker and snarling ferociously.
Gabriel.
“No!” Aaron screamed as he watched his beloved friend lunge at the supernatural invader.
The dog’s jaws clamped down upon the wrist of the angel’s sword hand with a wet crunch, like the sound of celery being crushed between eager teeth. The sound made Aaron wince with imagined pain.
The sword of fire tumbled from the angel’s grasp to dissipate in a flash before it could touch the floor—and the creature began to scream. The sound was like nothing Aaron had ever heard before, part crow caw, part whale song, part the screech of brakes.
“What is happening?” Lori cried aloud, clutching her moaning child to her.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Tom shouted as he lunged toward his family and wrapped his arms protectively about them.
Gabriel dangled from the angel’s wrist, growling and thrashing, as if trying to sever the hand from the arm. The angel seemed stunned by the savagery of the animal’s attack. The other two, who had remained uninvolved in the background, now stepped forward to assess their comrade’s situation.
“It hurts, my brothers!” wailed the Powers soldier as he frantically tried to shake Gabriel loose. “The animal is not as it should be—it has been changed!”
The angel flailed his arm wildly and Gabriel finally released his grip, falling to the floor.
“Gabriel, come! Now!” Aaron yelled.
The Lab stayed where he had landed, in a crouch, baring his fangs and snarling at the angels. A thick black blood, like motor oil, streamed from the injured angel’s wounds to form glistening puddles on the yellow-check flooring.
“No,” said the dog between snarls. “Get Mom, Dad, and Stevie out. I will keep these beasts here.”
Aaron was torn. “I’m not leaving you!” he yelled.
But he knew that every second counted. Aaron quickly gathered up his family and ushered them toward the hallway. He would try to get them out the front door to his car and then come back for his friend.
They stepped through the kitchen door and stopped short. Another angel was crouched in the hall, going through his bookbag, its eyes glistening wetly in the darkness. “Going nowhere, silly monkeys,” it hissed.
A powerful gust of wind pummeled the house from outside and it creaked and moaned with the force of the blow. Aaron tensed, sensing that something bad was to follow. The front door explosively blew in, torn from its hinges, practically crushing the squatting angel against the wall, and driving Aaron and his family back toward the kitchen in a shower of debris.
Aaron shielded his eyes from pieces of flying matter, and when
he looked up he saw that another of them now stood in the doorway, an angel with long white hair. The way this one stood—the way he carried himself—Aaron was certain he was in the presence of the leader, the one Zeke had called Verchiel.
The newcomer cocked his head strangely and surveyed all that was before him. Others slunk into the home behind their leader: all deathly pale, all wearing the same kind of clothes.
There must have been a sale somewhere, Aaron thought perversely, almost starting to giggle. The angels followed Verchiel closely as he strode down the hallway as if he belonged there, and Aaron forced his family back into the kitchen, out of his destructive path.
“What has happened here?” he heard Verchiel ask, in a low, melodic voice that was almost pleasing to the ear.
The Powers soldier held out his wounded arm to his master and averted his gaze. “The animal—it has been altered.”
Verchiel moved toward them—toward the family, his dark gaze on Gabriel, and they retreated to the living room.
“Stay away from my family,” the dog growled menacingly, baring his teeth and putting himself between the Stanleys and the angel leader.
“He has done this to you,” Verchiel said in disbelief, looking from the dog to Aaron. “It is worse than I imagined,” he whispered. “The Nephilim has spread its taint to a lowly beast.”
“I’m not lowly,” Gabriel snarled, and leaped at his newest adversary.
In a flash, powerful wings appeared from Verchiel’s back and swatted the dog violently away.
The animal yelped in pain as he hit the far wall, narrowly missing the windows, and crashed to the floor.
“See the damage you have already wrought, monster? This is why we act,” Verchiel growled, his wings slowly flapping like the twitching of a pensive cat’s tail before it strikes. “This is why the unclean must be purged from my world—” The angel paused, considering what he had just said before he continued. “For if allowed to fester, the consequences would be inconceivable.”