Dark Wings, Bright Flame

by Zoe Cannon

  The hillside was gone.

  He was indoors. Here, the heat came not from the burning eye of the sun, but from a radiator grumbling in the corner of the room. The walls, with their curling wallpaper adorned with cheerful sunflowers, were too close around him.

  The girl ran out of breath. She sucked in air, and started screaming again. She was frozen, eyes wide, hands tight at her sides.

  In the corner, behind the screaming girl, sat a squat artificial Christmas tree, dusted with imitation snow. Red and gold lights flashed, casting craft-project ornaments of Styrofoam and popsicle sticks in a bloody glow. A cardboard box with Xmas Tree scrawled across the side in marker sat nearby; a couple of ornaments were still lying inside. Two steaming mugs piled high with marshmallows sat on a chipped counter. The air smelled warm, like cocoa and sugar with a hint of cinnamon. No tang of blood, no choking dust.

  No Alex. Alex was gone.

  Alex had been gone for years. Both him and the man he had begged Eremiel to protect. Eremiel had failed. Even as he had stayed on that hillside, fighting the same doomed battle in his head over and over again, some part of him had always known it was over.

  But even here, there was still screaming.

  Eremiel looked down at himself. At his bullet-torn wings, his white suit stained with dirt and blood. His hair didn’t grow like a human’s did, or it wasn’t supposed to. But he could feel it hanging in a matted tangle down past his shoulders, as if it had been growing for years while he had been lost in his mind, trying to save Alex again and again. In the little girl’s place, he would have screamed at the sight of himself too.

  He tried to reset his appearance—to recapture his swept-back hair, his gleaming white wings, his immaculate suit. It should have been as simple as a thought. But when he looked down at himself again, nothing had changed.

  Footsteps rushed into the room. “Mia? What’s wrong?” A woman swept the girl up into her arms—and stopped short.

  The woman had the same hair as the girl, minus the pigtails, and the same eyes. She was wearing a sweater with sparkly reindeer marching across the chest and down the sleeves. Still holding the girl, she reached down and grabbed the first thing to hand—a tube of wrapping paper. Useless as a weapon—she had to know that. But she set the girl down behind her and stepped forward, holding the snowflake-printed paper out in front of her like a sword.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “Did he send you?”

  Eremiel closed his eyes and tried to shift away. He tried to return to that lonely hill, to the memory of Alex. But he knew, even before he opened his eyes again, that it wouldn’t work. Once he had been called to a human’s side, he was incapable of leaving until that human was safe.

  Our until there was no one left to protect.

  “Get out of my house!” The woman advanced on him with the wrapping paper. Fear shone in her eyes, but that didn’t stop her from jabbing the air with her makeshift weapon as she stalked forward. She had the look of someone who was used to fear, and had learned to live with it as her companion while she did what needed to be done.

  Eremiel lowered his eyes. He opened his palms, to show her he meant no harm. “I can’t. I’m sorry. You called me here, when you prayed for an angel’s protection, and now I am bound to your side until it is done.”

  He didn’t know why the prayer had caught hold of him, out of all the angels in the cosmos. He had proved he wasn’t capable of protecting anyone anymore. Why him? Why not someone who could offer her the safety she needed? Someone who looked strong and reassuring, and not like he had just lost a war?

  The woman stiffened. She studied him in silence for the long moment he had experienced so many times before—the moment where his charge decided whether or not to believe in him.

  She let out her breath and lowered her weapon. “Mia,” she called over her shoulder, “go wait in the bedroom.”

  The girl peered out at him from behind her back. “Is he really an angel? What’s wrong with his wings?”

  “Go,” the woman ordered.

  Mia went, scurrying for the door. As she disappeared into the bedroom, she cast a wide-eyed look over her shoulder, equal parts curiosity and fear.

  “Stand up,” the woman said, turning her commanding tone on Eremiel. “Let me see you.”

  Eremiel hadn’t realized he was still crouching, as if he were still trying to protect Alex’s body. He raised himself to his feet. A few torn feathers fluttered to the floor.

  The woman followed the feathers with her eyes. Her gaze moved to the blood smeared across his chest. Her eyes widened in alarm. “Are you… all right? Do you need a doctor?”

  Hot shame spread through him. A protector was meant to look serene and unflappable, like nothing could touch him. The sight of him should inspire the humans under his care to breathe easier, not to summon medical care for him.

  “My well-being is not your concern,” he said, trying to transform his roughened voice into smooth, reassuring tones. “I am here to look after you, not the other way around.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “Forgive my saying so, but you don’t look like you’re in any shape to be protecting anybody.”

  “I’ll do what you called me here to do,” he assured her. But his voice shook as he said the words, and he knew she could hear it. He took a deep breath, even though his body didn’t require it, and tried again to sound like the protector he had been before the battle. “Why did you pray for protection?”

  She shook her head slowly, as if she was still trying to convince herself he was real. “We were decorating the tree.” She waved a hand toward it. “I always make a wish when I put the star at the top. It’s tradition, from when I was a kid. We would all put the star up together, and wish for whatever we most wanted for Christmas, and of course whatever we wished for would always show up because we had already put it on our Christmas lists. But this year…” She looked down at the cardboard box, at the star that lay lonely at the bottom, with only a couple of cracked silver baubles for company. “I looked down at the angel topper we never use, and I remembered this old book I used to have about guardian angels, and I thought this year we needed an angel more than I needed to wish for a new suit to wear on interviews.”

  “Because you’re in danger.” Gunfire echoed in his ears.

  The woman lowered her voice, glancing toward the bedroom door. “It’s my ex. He gets Mia for one week a month. Only for the past few months, she’s been coming back quieter and quieter each time. It’s not like her. After the last time, I saw bruises on her arm.” Her hands tightened around the roll of wrapping paper. “I told her he wouldn’t be seeing her again. He wouldn’t accept that. So I put in a call to the state. Nothing came of it, of course.”

  The wrapping paper shook in her fingers. She clutched it to her chest, and glared at her hands, as if they were to blame for betraying her emotion.

  “That’s when he came here,” she said. “He told me not to try anything like that again, or else he’d get to keep Mia full-time because she’d only have one parent left. He had a gun. He brought it into my apartment, with my daughter asleep only a few feet away.” Her voice was dark with suppressed rage.

  Eremiel pictured Alex at Mia’s age, sitting up in bed with his knees pulled to his chest. The two of them listening together as his father punched walls downstairs, and then moved on to Alex’s older brother. He remembered tightening his wings around Alex’s head so Alex wouldn’t hear the noises.

  “His December week is supposed to start today,” said the woman. “He told me he’d take the first week in December instead of the holiday week, and let me have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. As a thank-you for being so cooperative.” The paper crinkled as she crushed the roll against her chest. “He called earlier, and said he’d be here at seven.”

  Eremiel looked past her, at the cracked plastic clock ticking away the seconds on the wall. Five minutes to seven.

  “Can you keep Mia safe?” She was trying to hide it
, but he heard the pleading in her voice, like Alex when he had asked Eremiel to save his friend. “Can you keep her here?”

  He should have had said yes in his calm, steady voice, the way he had so many times before. That was his job, every bit as much as shielding his charges from the threats they faced. He wasn’t just here to keep them safe, but to help them feel safe.

  But he hesitated. And the woman noticed. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re a real-life angel. You can answer prayers and create miracles. And you’re not sure you can protect one little girl from her father?” Her voice vibrated with anger, but underneath the anger was a fear sharper than the one he had seen in her eyes when she had marched toward him with her wrapping paper weapon.

  “I will protect her,” he promised, a few seconds too late.

  “But you’re not sure of that, are you?” she demanded. “You look like you’ve already lost a fight. Did that happen trying to protect someone else? What happened to them?”

  Eremiel flinched like she had struck him. “It was war,” he said, half to her, half to himself. “War is a machine of death. There’s only so much anyone can do to stop it. Sometimes all the protection we can offer isn’t enough to withstand the human determination to do harm.”

  It was easy to say. Not so easy to believe. Not when he could still feel hot blood gushing out against his chest, as he clutched Alex’s friend in his arms. Not when he could see Alex rushing forward to shield his dying companion—which should have been Eremiel’s job, if he had been fast enough. Not when, a second later, the bullet caught Alex between the eyes and sent him sprawling, lifeless, into the circle of Eremiel’s wings.

  Eremiel tried to bring himself back to the present. “His name was Alex. He first called to me when he was a child. I suppose it created an affinity between us, because whenever he called out for protection again, I was the one who was sent. I protected him as a teenager, when he was in a car crash. Then against a mugger, his first week of college. Then at his mother’s funeral, when there was no physical danger, but he needed to know that he wasn’t alone. And then… the last time he called to me…” The words caught in his throat. He swallowed. “The towers came down the week after his mother’s death. The two tragedies blended together in his mind. He joined the military two weeks later. He wanted to do something good with his life, to protect others the way he could never protect his mother or his brother. When he called to me, that last time, it wasn’t for himself. He asked me to protect a friend of his. A fellow soldier.”

  Which must have been why this woman’s call had been strong enough to pull him in, when he had been able to resist all the others over the years. She, like Alex, had prayed to protect someone else, not herself. Somewhere deep down, it must have reminded him of Alex’s last request, and drawn him in against his will.

  The woman’s face softened. But then she glanced past him toward the door, and over her shoulder at the clock, and the sympathy disappeared. “And you failed.”

  “Yes,” Eremiel said softly.

  “So call up whoever you answer to,” said the woman, with a gesture toward the ceiling, “and ask them to send someone else. Someone who can protect my daughter.”

  “I would if I could,” said Eremiel. “But it doesn’t work that way. I was the one who was sent.”

  “Then somebody made a mistake. I’m not trusting my daughter to a protector who can’t do his job, angel or not.” Her hands were shaking again. “Go back to where you came from, and send me a replacement.”

  Three sharp knocks made the door rattle in its frame.

  The woman flinched. “I guess it’s too late now.” She took a deep breath. “Well? Are you going to take care of him?”

  She motioned to the door, as if she expected him to answer it. He didn’t know what she expected, but he was going to have to disappoint her. He and his kind were shields, not swords. Even if he were still everything he used to be, he wouldn’t have been able to simply turn the threat away. “We do not engage in violence.”

  “Of course you don’t. Guess that prayer was a dud after all.” She gave a jagged shrug. “Oh well. It wasn’t like I expected to get a real answer anyway.”

  “I will go to your daughter,” said Eremiel. “I will shield her.”

  The woman’s face twisted. “You do that. Meanwhile, I’ll stay out here and deal with the threat you’re too afraid to face.”

  “You open this door right now,” a man’s voice called from outside, “or I’ll break it down. You know I can do it. You really want to scare Mia like that?”

  The woman took another long breath, then reached for the doorknob. As she slowly swung the door open, Eremiel entered the bedroom.

  Mia and her mother clearly shared the room. There was a twin bed on one side, with unicorn-patterned sheets, and on the other, a double mattress on the floor. Stuffed animals were piled on Mia’s bed, and she sat cross-legged in the center of them, clutching a ragged rabbit to her chest.

  When he walked in, she looked up, the fear plain on her face. She relaxed a little when she saw that it was him. But only a little. She edged back toward the wall.

  He sat down on the edge of her bed. Slowly, he extended a torn and bloody wing, and brushed the tip against her shoulders. He paused, giving her the chance to pull away. She hesitated, stiff, then crept closer. He wrapped the wing around her shoulders. The feel of the small body trembling against his feathers reminded him of Alex, the first time they had met.

  “I heard what you said out there,” said Mia, without quite looking at him.

  Then she had overheard things neither he nor her mother had meant for her ears. “I will protect you,” he promised, although he didn’t know if the words had any meaning now that she had heard about his failure with Alex.

  “It’s okay if you can’t,” she said. “I don’t really believe in angels anyway.”

  How different would Alex’s life have been, if he hadn’t believed in angels? What would have happened to him if Eremiel hadn’t come to him that first night, and proved himself well enough that Alex had called on him again and again?

  “I will protect you,” Eremiel repeated, his voice stronger this time. “You have my word.”

  Outside the bedroom, raised voices assaulted his ears like gunfire. First the man’s voice, indistinct, making demands in a rough tone. Then the woman’s protests, high and helpless, nothing like the fierce woman who had confronted him. Mia quivered against Eremiel’s wing.

  “That’s enough. I barely get any time with my daughter as it is, and you’ve wasted too much of it already.” The man spoke loudly enough this time for Eremiel to make out every word. “I’m going home, and she’s coming with me.”

  “Don’t go in there!” the woman shouted. “Don’t—” Her voice cut off. Then came a thud as she hit the floor or the wall, and a muffled cry that she didn’t hold back quite well enough to stop Mia from going rigid and pressing tightly against Eremiel’s side.

  The bedroom door burst open. The man in the doorway wore three days’ worth of stubble, and a cheap shirt that shimmered in the light like an oil slick. He might have looked like Mia, in the jaw and around the eyes, if his face hadn’t been contorted in an ugly scowl.

  Eremiel tightened his wing around Mia in a hug. Then he pulled it back to his side as he stood.

  Mia’s father stopped in the middle of what he had been about to say. “The fuck?” he muttered.

  Eremiel extended his wings as far as they would go. The tips brushed the peeling paint on the walls. “I have been sent to protect this child,” he said, meeting the man’s eyes with a level stare. “You will not take her.”

  Mia’s father stared right back. Then he burst out laughing. “What the hell, Janice? You really thought this would scare me away?”

  Janice pushed herself to her feet. She shoved her way through the doorway, past Mia’s father. “He’s the real deal,” she said, although Eremiel could still see the doubt in her eyes. “You need to leave.”

&nb
sp; Mia’s father shook his head, grinning, as if this was the best joke he had ever heard. “Just how stupid do you think I am? You think some two-bit horror-movie angel costume is going to scare me away? If you were going to go to all this trouble, you could have hired some real muscle. But then, you never were too bright, were you, Janice?”

  Mia made a small, strangled noise. Eremiel didn’t have to look at her to know she didn’t believe in his protection either, not really. He tried to steady himself, to transform his face to stone, to be the serene and immovable protector he had been for so many humans before now. But his wings trembled with tension, and he knew without looking in the mirror that his face betrayed every bit of the pain of the past years—decades?—since he had failed Alex. He couldn’t put on that mask anymore, not now that he knew there was no truth behind it.

  Mia’s father took a step forward. “I don’t know what kind of film-school reject you are, or what rock Janice found you under, and I don’t care. Move over and let me take my daughter home, or I’m going to get to her through you.”

  This man thought he was tough. But Eremiel had seen tough. He had seen Alex on the battlefield, shielding the friend he had to have known was already dead. Watching his own death coming, and not flinching.

  Eremiel stepped forward to meet him. His wings brushed the ceiling with a whisper. “Don’t come any closer.” His voice was rougher now. This time, he didn’t try to hide it.

  Mia’s father took an involuntary step back. His scowl deepened as he realized he had betrayed his fear. “Do you really want to start something with me? Is this how you want to start off the kid’s holiday season, with a fight? Is that what you want, Janice?”

  Janice ducked under Eremiel’s wing to get to Mia’s bed. Wordlessly, she pulled her daughter against her.

  Mia’s father clenched his fists as he took another step. “Last chance. Step aside.” His hand shot under Eremiel’s wing as he reached for Mia.

  In that instant, Eremiel didn’t see a meaty hand grabbing for the cowering girl. He saw a bullet flying at Alex. The bullet he hadn’t been able to stop.