"The world is obsessed with angels, aren't they?" the woman asked, a note of amusement in her weary voice.
"Well, it is nice to think someone's looking out for us," Anna offered as she brought two fountain drinks and an ICEE to the counter. She wondered if Jonah could get a brain freeze by drinking one too quickly. She was going to find out. "After all, it seems like a lot for one deity to do."
"Tell me about it. I can't keep track of one teenager." The woman sent a glance to where the teenager in question was sullenly stocking shelves, a boy rapidly approaching Jonah's height but who'd not yet grown into the lanky limbs.
"Maybe God keeps hoping we'll look out for ourselves," he commented. "Unlike Grandpa out there, sitting on his butt, letting the world take care of him."
"John," his mother snapped. "That's enough."
"Yeah, yeah." He gestured to the shelves. "He used to do this. Now I'm stuck here doing it because he's just a lump on a log. Not a thing wrong with him. Maybe I'll go fight in some stupid war a hundred years ago, so I can cop out whenever there's something I don't want to deal with." He stomped off toward the back for another box.
Pat pressed her lips together hard, and Anna noticed a tremor in her hands as she took her money for her purchases. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "That's been building up for the last hour. I think you just came in at the right time for him to blow."
"It's okay," Anna said, but the woman shook her head.
"I know he seems horrid, but he's not. He wanted to be with his friends today, maybe needed to be, but I really needed the help and . . ."
Anna, remembering the way they all looked away from the abused woman in the diner, reached across the counter and gripped her hand. "It's all right."
Pat swallowed, her eyes filling abruptly with tears. She latched onto Anna's hand as if desperate for the touch. "Alan . . . that's John's dad. He died a couple months ago in a car crash. You know teenagers. They strike out when they hurt. And unfortunately, it hasn't helped that Alan's death sent Gabe back off into his own world. I really could have used his help with John, to help him get through this."
"And you," Anna observed.
Pat dashed away the tears with the back of her hand. "It's not Gabe's fault. He's done a lot better these past few years, but he's not ever . . . Well, he's never been who he was before the war, according to Alan. Came back to this store when Alan was ten, and he's been just pottering here like a ghost for all these years. Alan's mother had to go and do everything that happened off the property . . ." She stopped, mortification gripping her features. "God, listen to me. I'm so sorry. I can't believe I'm telling you this. I don't even know you."
"It's all right," Anna repeated. "I guess you don't have a lot of people to talk to about it out here."
"No." Pat shook her head with a slight smile. "There's a group of us that get together, but sometimes it just gets so quiet, I think I might go mad. Alan and I loved it here, the isolation and landscape, but that was because we had each other . . ."
Abruptly, she gave herself a shake. Giving Anna her change, she nodded. "I can't afford to break down like this. I thank you for your kindness, though. Have a good day. I should go check on my son."
"Hope everything will be all right," Anna said softly to the woman's back as she stepped behind the curtain between the main store and what she supposed was the supply or living area for the family. Anna drew another couple of bills out of her wallet and put them by the cash register, hoping it would help.
When she stepped out on the porch, she found Jonah sitting at the end of the porch next to the man she now knew was Gabe, the boy's grandfather. Instead of the rocker, Jonah was sitting on the top step of the side access stairs to the porch, his head propped back on the rail. Oddly, he was gazing at the same view as the old man, both quiet, no conversation apparently needed. But there was an unusual sense of . . . togetherness in their posture toward one another.
Anna stopped, holding the screen door so it wouldn't slam and attract attention, studying the two of them for long moments, as the seed of something grew in her mind. Could it be so simple? As simple as the apparent mystery of a human shaman?
Her heart pounding in her ears, she stepped back into the store. There was something else she wanted to ask Pat.
IF their next hitched ride thought it unusual for Anna to ask him to drop them off at a point of the highway where there was nothing but desert on either side, he didn't remark on it. The park ranger headed to his post on the Black Rock Wilderness Reserve was apparently used to hikers and researchers in the area, though he verified they had the type of supplies that would care for them in the survivalist conditions, probably to save him having to rescue them later. Jonah covered what they didn't have by showing enough familiarity with the terrain that the ranger was satisfied they knew what they were doing.
If he only knew, Anna reflected grimly. The mindmap Mina had given her told her this was where they had to strike out across the desert, off the known roads. They would be walking in a northwest direction to get in the vicinity of the Schism, and from the guarded questions she'd asked the ranger, she now knew she'd been mistaken in her time estimates. It could be as much as another day and a half until they stumbled on it. Then, once they found the energy signature of the schism, it would be entirely up to it as to when it would decide if they were worth opening its gateway and giving them access to Desert Crossroads, the shaman's home. Anna deliberately didn't watch the Jeep leave them behind, facing instead the desert landscape stretching out before them.
Neither she nor Jonah had lived the majority of their lives in man-made environments, so the lack of roads shouldn't have been daunting. Regardless, it took an act of courage to make that step off the pavement, and for the first time she understood human attachment to signs of civilization.
I can do this. I must do this. Jonah will not do this without me. This is my purpose.
"Are you worried about getting lost?" Jonah's voice spoke just above her, to her left, and she felt the brush of his body against her arm, a reassurance.
"No. I have Mina's mindmap," she reminded him, with a grimace. "I think somehow that spell is also how she's tracking us. How she knew where we were and that we were in danger the other night, so she could send David and the other angel to us."
He slanted a glance at her as they started to walk. "Why won't you say Lucifer's name?"
Leave it to him to assume the truth rather than accept the absurd but courteous idea that she had forgotten his name.
"He's a little daunting."
Jonah snorted. "More annoying than anything."
"Maybe to an angel that can stand toe-to-toe with him, but to the rest of everything breathing, he's a little scary. You know, you're a little scary."
"And yet, you're not scared of me. Nowhere near as much as you should be. I think that ICEE did freeze my brain. It still hurts." He stopped, his eyes closing so they almost disappeared as his brow furrowed. "You're trying to kill me."
She made a face at him, but a moment later his hand closed over her elbow, guiding her to the right before she put her foot square into the middle of a lowlying shrub with spiny branches. She hid a smile, knowing he'd just proven why she wasn't as afraid of him as he thought she should be.
"Maybe if I understood Lucifer better, I would feel less intimidated. I'm not saying I understand you, really," she added hastily. "But sometimes knowing a little bit about why someone acts the way he does helps. Like that man back there on the porch, Gabe. He's that way from fighting in the Vietnam War." She glanced over at Jonah. "I talked to his daughter-in-law. She said he's gone through all sorts of counseling, and she has literature on ways to help him deal with it."
"Like what?" Jonah's voice was neutral. He squatted to take a look at a rock, turn it over and examine the bug life there before resettling it. He might not even be listening to her words, just the companionship of her voice. He'd done that occasionally on their journey, and she hadn't been offended by it. But she
hoped he was really listening now.
"She said the counselors taught him how to visualize. You know, have a picture of something ready in his mind to call forward when he remembers the bad things and it becomes overwhelming. They've also told his family to try and get him to talk about what happened, how he wants to change how he feels, how to improve things. You know. Coping skills. Get him to face that he's carrying blame and guilt for things that aren't his fault."
Jonah pressed his hand on the flat rock, staring down at the shape of his fingers on it. Tilting his head, he looked up at her, squinting. He was wearing one of the bill caps they'd bought to shade their eyes and faces from the sun, but it didn't make his dark eyes any less intense, able to reach inside of her with their ancient knowledge, the things he'd seen and knew.
She knew she should feel incredibly foolish for thinking, even for a moment, that human psychological ploys could apply to him. But when she'd seen the two of them out there, she'd heard the click in her mind, the sense that she'd been given a clue and had to follow it.
"Do you think that truly helps?" he murmured. "It's all games of the mind. It doesn't change the truth, the reality. The why." He rose. Reaching out, he slid his knuckles along the curve of her face, a distracted gesture, like the way he'd placed his hand on the rock, feeling the texture as if it were something alien, distant to wherever he was in his mind. "That's what Gabe can't find. He's used the things you described. Coping skills, just as you said. Then he loses his son in what appears to be a senseless accident, another body on the pile stacked up in his mind. His coping shields got blown into shrapnel, taking him back to the ultimate question. If there's no why that makes sense to him, that makes it worth it, then the rest of it has no meaning to him. He can't fully recover until he has that. And in the face of evil, there is no why."
His expression darkened. It reminded her of her earlier thought, of how he could be almost as intimidating as Lucifer. She had to suppress the instinct to take a step back. "It's even worse when you've always thought you did understand the why, but then that gets taken away," he said. "That's when the answer strays into the realm of gods. Men like Gabe, they've stood inside that realm and screamed for answers, for accountability, and met only silence. Even the Dark Ones couldn't have conjured a Hell as diabolically ironic as that."
He turned, dropping his hand, and continued walking.
Perhaps, she reflected despondently, it was best for her not to trust her intuition quite so implicitly when it came to dealing with an angel.
Then he stopped, came back just as she started to trudge along with him, and lifted the backpack away from her.
"You will stop carrying this," he admonished her gently. For the first time, he seemed to notice she'd changed clothes, and a corner of his mouth twitched. "No danger of you outrunning this guardian angel, little one. Would you like to ride for a bit?" He indicated his back.
As much as she wanted to say yes, she feared it wouldn't be long before it wasn't a choice. So for now she demurred, indicating her desire to walk. He had her follow behind him, instructing her to follow in his footsteps so he could keep her from stepping into softer places where the volcanic sand would go down deeper than expected, or places where the ground cover would scratch her legs. There was also the occasional poisonous snake or bug to avoid. In return, she spoke up if they strayed off the direction they needed to follow.
While he'd encouraged her several times at the beginning of their journey to turn back, Anna now knew he hadn't ever really wanted her to leave. Whether that was an unhealthy dependence on her or something more played in her imagination, giving her alternately worried and warm thoughts.
She should just count it a blessing he'd stopped trying, for she sensed he could be implacable in his purpose when his mind was set. She wasn't so sure at this juncture if he couldn't tempt her to capitulate.
They discovered a hikers' road of sorts, which of course contained the inevitable evidence of human travelers--trash. To pass the time, she coaxed him into a game of kick the can as they made their way down the dusty track. They worked the soup can back and forth between them at an ambling pace. For a time the clanking was the only sound breaking their companionable silence. That and the desert creatures, insects and birds making their harsh calls and chirps, warbles and hiccups. Most they did not see, but then he pointed out a large gold and black lizard.
"Gila monster."
Anna squatted to look at the large snakelike lizard burrowed under one of the shrubs, but when she leaned forward, Jonah's hand came down on her shoulder, keeping her still. "They aren't necessarily friendly. They only eat about four or five times a year, but when they do, they consume about 50 percent of their body weight. That would make you an appealing meal, little one."
She made a face at him, then she saw him studying her face, his eyes sharp on what she knew was a pale complexion. Adjusting her hat, she rose and returned to the road and their game.
"So what did Lord Lucifer mean, that you could have called him whenever you wished?"
Fortunately the question broke his scrutiny. "Angels are linked, telepathically, for lack of a better word. To each other and somewhat to the Lady Herself."
"So you're in each other's heads all the time?"
"Goddess, no." He chuckled. "What a racket that would be. There's a skill to it you have to learn. Which is good, because otherwise a young angel, still inexperienced at shielding his thoughts, would be popping in and out of the mind of everyone he thought about. It's like a very heavy door, and you have to learn to hold it open. It takes effort, so it shuts on its own when you're not focused on it."
He eyed the can, gave it a deft kick that took it in the air and cleared a desert tortoise crossing their path. The creature plodded onward, unconcerned. Jonah guided Anna in a wide berth around the creature.
"Surely he's not a danger."
"It's not that." He shook his head. "If you startle them, it can make them void their bladders. They store fluid in their bodies to last them for months out here without a water source. If you scare them, they can die."
"Do you know everything?"
He flashed her one of those devastating grins that could make her toes curl. "When it comes to the Lady's creations, I have access to a universal library. As soon as I see something, I can bring information about it into my head. But after so many years, I've retained a great deal of it. Angels have vast levels of memory, so I rarely have to access that library anymore unless it's something new I haven't seen before."
"So is accessing the Lady like that?"
He slanted her a glance. "Not exactly. You know some of the different stories, like the Tree of Knowledge?"
She nodded. It relieved her, how comfortable he appeared with the discussion. But then she realized this would be familiar territory. Patiently teaching her what he likely had taught many young angels before, like David. "There's a veil over the world, over every world inhabited by Her creations. She won't delve into thoughts or intent below that veil. When you pray, it can pierce that veil, and reach Her. It's like a radio signal. If you pray with pure intent and focus, She hears it better. If you pray for a pretty dress"--he slanted a humorous look at her--"it never makes it past the static."
"I'll keep that in mind," she said dryly.
"When She gets prayers, it's not like Santa going through a laundry list. She sees cycles, knows how things are supposed to fit and work for each life and how they all connect. She therefore knows whether it's a good wish to grant or not. She understands every ripple in the pond. At least that's what most believe."
"Does She ever walk the Earth among us?" Anna interjected quickly, before he could follow that line of thought into darker territory.
"She's in everything." Reaching out, he touched the small fuscia-colored cactus flower he'd put in the band of her hat earlier in the day. She tried not to lean into his touch like a lovesick girl, but she couldn't help brushing her lips against his hand as he pulled it away. His lips
curved, his eyes warming on her. "Especially in spontaneous acts of love."
"Can She read your mind if you're above that veil?"
"Yes and no. If you're in Her presence, She can, but She won't unless asked. If you ask, you feel Her there, but just like mist. If She focuses too hard, She can destroy your mind."
Anna came to a stop. "You've been in Her presence? I mean, like a real audience?"
Jonah turned to face her. "Of course. Though it's been a long while. Perhaps fifty years. Not like Lucifer or Michael."
"Well, of course," Anna said with forced casualness.
"Michael is a Full Submission angel. And Lucifer may be, but he's closemouthed about his status. A Full Submission angel is permanently, completely mind-open to Her, their will Hers to direct. You're giving Her everything of yourself, holding up a mirror to your own soul. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael--they're all Full Submissions. Lucifer's in charge of what humans call Hell, but it's about redemption and justice, not eternal damnation, unless someone is just stubborn, too stubborn to learn."
At her sidelong glance, his lips twisted. "He always said if I were human, I'd be the one too stubborn to learn."
She laughed then. But after a moment, she drew closer to him, touched his arm, looked up into his face searchingly. "You stood before Her. With Her. What was it like?"
"Beyond words, little one," he said after a long moment. His hand rose, massaged his chest, then a little harder. "It . . . was the answer to everything. You just want to stay there . . . but you know you can't." He winced as if he'd hit an old wound and kicked the can again, she supposed to cover it, but she'd already seen.
"You're the second in command of the armories, right? Have you ever considered it, the Full Submission thing?"
"Once or twice. I'm sure there's an appealing peace to it, having your will belong to another. But I'm not ready to relinquish that."
"Why?" At his quizzical look, she shrugged. "I mean, if She's the Mother, She takes care of all of us."
A wry smile touched his mouth. "My job is to take care of Her. Perhaps I'm not entirely sure She's the best judge of how to do that all the time."