A Terrible Fall of Angels

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “I also said that a priest can’t get rid of me, and that was the truth, too, Detective.”

  “You’re just a demon using a human body; exorcism is designed to fix that,” I said. I was fishing, trying to figure out what was different about this demon and Mark Cookson.

  “You think you’ve saved Shelby, but you haven’t. She can’t hide from me, Detective.”

  “You could have had a new life in this body if you had just left Shelby alone,” I said.

  “Mark wanted sex with those five women. We did try for willing and seduction, but like dear Shelby they chose force. Willing sex would have saved their lives, but if not that, then he wanted their deaths. Until we finish that part of the bargain, we are not free to have another life,” he said from his knees. He didn’t seem in a hurry to stand up; maybe he was still feeling weak from being shot twice?

  “A woman doesn’t force a man to rape her,” I said. “A man refuses to take no for an answer, then forces himself on a woman, that’s the definition of rape.”

  “Look at this body, we could have made passionate love to them, but they would not have us. That’s not our fault, that’s their fault.”

  My finger caressed the trigger, not pulling it, but God help me, I wanted to. “A woman is allowed to say no to anyone that she doesn’t want to have sex with.”

  “It doesn’t work that way in Hell,” he said.

  “Enjoy it when you get back there,” I said.

  “I won’t be going back.”

  “Tell that to your exorcist.”

  “I’d rather tell it to you, Havoc. What a lovely name, Havoc. It suits you somehow.”

  “You know my name, what’s yours?”

  He looked over his shoulder, smiling. “Now, Havoc, that wouldn’t be any fun. If you want to know my name, you’ll have to guess.”

  “I won’t play twenty questions with you,” I said.

  Cookson sniffed the air like he had earlier. “Shelby is nearby, still within my reach.”

  “No, she’s not,” I said.

  A shudder ran through Cookson.

  “What was that?” Stevens asked.

  Another shudder ran through Cookson. “There are a few downsides to this new form,” he said in a voice that almost sounded like he was in pain.

  “You feel pain,” I said.

  “Demons feel pain, Detective, or what would be the point of torturing us in Hell?”

  “But you don’t feel the pain of the human body you possess,” I said.

  “Not normally,” the demon said, and shuddered so hard that he fell forward onto all fours.

  “Don’t move!” Stevens shouted.

  “Sorry,” said Cookson, “a side effect.”

  “Are you sick or something?” Stevens asked.

  “Or something,” Cookson said, and fell to the floor writhing.

  “He’s having a seizure,” Stevens said.

  “You said the ambulance was on the way, right?” I said.

  “Yeah, but we have to do what we can to keep him from busting his head open.” Stevens holstered his gun and started toward Cookson.

  “Stevens, don’t.”

  Cookson’s body shuddered and writhed on the carpet. It looked enough like someone having a grand mal seizure that even an emergency room might have been fooled, but it wasn’t right. Seizures of any kind were flagged in possible possession cases, because they’d been mistaken for demonic interference for centuries along with so many things.

  “We can’t let him hurt himself like this,” Stevens said.

  “He’s a demon wearing a human suit, that’s not a seizure,” I said.

  “You can’t know that,” he said, and was careful to kneel without spoiling my aim.

  There was fresh blood. I had a second of wondering if Stevens was right. Had Cookson melding with the demon caused seizures? Then I realized the blood was coming from Cookson’s hand—there was no reason for that to bleed.

  “Stevens, get away from him!”

  Stevens froze in midmotion as he reached out to try to help. I thought he was going to do what I’d told him to do and back away, and then his shoulders hunched forward, and claw tips sprouted out of the back of his body armor. I pulled the trigger, aiming at the center of Cookson’s back, but he rolled in a blur of speed so that I shot into the back of Stevens’s body armor.

  “God!” I yelled it and pulled my gun to the side, aiming at the floor so I didn’t shoot Stevens again. I tried to move around so I could shoot Cookson, but he rolled and took Stevens with him, turning the other cop into a shield. The claws through his chest and out his back held him in place. A second set of claws curled around Stevens’s shoulder, pinning him in place so I had no shot. I moved to the side, trying to circle around them and shoot Cookson. There was blood on Stevens’s face, spilling out of his mouth. God help him!

  It was a bad idea, but I walked up on them, trying to find a way to hurt Cookson enough for him to let Stevens go. If he was going to be saved, I had to get him away from the demon now, not later. I prayed that I’d live through crowding the demon, but I had to try to save the other cop.

  I had to almost stand on top of them to catch a glimpse of a yellow eye peering over the cop’s shoulder, but the demon jerked back so that the head and all the rest of the main part of the body was lost between Stevens and his body armor, and then I realized the policeman was shorter than the demon. I had a clear shot at the legs, so I took it.

  “Damn you!” Cookson yelled, and then he was pushing Stevens into me like a battering ram. I stumbled, fighting to keep my feet, and that was enough time for Cookson to get to his feet, still holding the other cop’s body like a shield. I tried to shoot the demon again, but he rushed forward, stronger and faster than humanly possible. Cookson shoved me into the glass case, and it exploded under us in a thousand biting shards.

  I ended up on the bottom with Stevens between us, the demon pinning us to the broken glass. I still had my gun but it was trapped underneath the body and the demon’s weight. I fought to work it free to aim—and realized that the officer’s Guardian Angel wasn’t glowing anymore; he was dead, and his angel was free to return to God. Only my glow and the twisted thing at the demon’s back remained.

  Cookson’s face was humanoid, but the mouth was full of black fangs to match the curved black claws. His skin had turned red like the scales he’d worn at the hospital. The fangs snapped at my face, and I thought, You don’t have fangs, toothless, but nothing changed. The demon snarled, “I’m half human, and we have our own imagination, Havoc. You can’t fuck with our form now, too late for that!”

  I got my gun free and aimed at its face. The demon grinned and opened its mouth wide to engulf the gun and half my hand, and bit down as I pulled the trigger. I screamed and the bullet went out the back of the demon’s head while it laughed. It bit down and I screamed again.

  The angel trapped at its back shrieked with me. I balled my hand into a fist and kept firing the bullets into the demon. I couldn’t kill it, but maybe I could keep it from biting my hand off. It finally reared back and spat a bullet at my face.

  “That still hurts, damn, but pain is worth free will.”

  His Guardian Angel screamed again as the demon’s claws scrambled for my face. If I died, the angel was trapped in torment. I prayed that if I died, I’d be able to set the angel free first.

  There was the sound of wings like birds, and a voice breathed through me, “Zaniel, come to me.”

  I didn’t think I could be any more scared, but I was wrong. I didn’t want to see Her again, ever, because I was afraid of what would happen. If it had been just my death on the line I might have hesitated, but I couldn’t leave the Guardian Angel to be tortured.

  “I will destroy that handsome face and body, Havoc, and then I will hunt down the last women and be free to roam the Earth. No priest will exorcise me to Hell, because I will be half human.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said through gritted teeth as I f
ought to keep his claws from my face.

  “No, but it’s still true,” the demon said.

  My gun clicked empty, and I couldn’t reach the extra magazine in my pocket. He raised black claws upward like five daggers. I was still trapped under the weight of two bodies, ground into the glass and diamonds. I was out of time to decide, so I did the only thing I could be certain would free the angel. I opened the space between here and where the angels dance on golden threads and sing the universe into continuous creation.

  Our blood spilled out like rubies shining and bouncing in round globes because there was no gravity here. Golden lines of power sang and gleamed around us, and the angels sang the universe into being, creating and re-creating over and over. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, it simply is. The perfection of it filled me and I wasn’t even afraid as I watched the rubies sparkle against the gold and silver and . . . colors that had no words to describe them surrounded us.

  Stevens didn’t care, because the dead feel nothing, but Mark Cookson cared. He began to scream. The human part of him wasn’t ready to go among the angels. The demon part of him got control and growled at me, “You cannot destroy us that easily.”

  The angel on his back screamed for help and now there were many others that could hear its cry. The angels came glowing and burning and I heard a familiar voice. “Zaniel, what have they done to you?”

  I said, “Save the angel, set it free.”

  “And what of you, Zaniel?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “You are home,” she said, and I could almost see her golden hair, almost see her eyes, and then she was too far inside my head and she saw what I thought home meant, and it wasn’t Her. We floated in the middle of holy fire; the seraphim had come, and neither Mark Cookson nor the demon sharing his body was pure enough of heart to survive their six-winged embrace.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  I woke up in the hospital with Dr. Paulson looking down at me. “Good to see you awake,” he said, smiling.

  “Good to be awake,” I said; my voice sounded rough as if I’d been out longer than I realized.

  I don’t know if he saw it on my face, but he answered my question. “You’ve been unconscious for almost two days.”

  “How bad?” I asked, and looked down at myself. I had expected my hand to be in bandages, but it wasn’t. I remembered the fangs biting into me; that shouldn’t have healed in two days.

  “The officers who came to try to rescue you and the other policeman said you were on fire, but it gave off no heat and cast no shadows. I’d love to know how you conjured fire to kill the demon without setting the building and yourself ablaze.”

  “It was holy fire, and I’ve walked through it before, so I knew I would be fine.”

  “Mark Cookson’s body wasn’t fine; the other police saw it burn, but there was nothing left of it.”

  “The Infernal can’t survive the touch of holy flame,” I said.

  “The dead police officer’s body was intact and unharmed, though the witnesses aren’t sure why it didn’t burn.”

  “Stevens was dead; he couldn’t be afraid of the holy flame and its messengers, and he must have been a good person when he was alive,” I said.

  “From all accounts he was,” Paulson said. He then proceeded to check me top to bottom to see if there were any lingering effects from what had happened. At the end he said, “You are remarkably well for someone who was attacked by a demon and burned with holy fire.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t think it’s me you should be thanking.”

  “You’re right,” I said, and sent a prayer of gratitude to God and the angels, though I was careful not to think too hard about the latter. I did not need another visitation.

  “Your lieutenant is outside waiting for me to give him permission to see you. Are you up to answering questions about what happened?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I knew you would say that, but talk fast, because you need to rest.”

  “I thought I wasn’t hurt?”

  “You don’t seem to be, but you were unconscious for almost forty-eight hours, that makes me cautious.”

  “I feel fine.”

  “All your wounds are healed, even the arm and stomach,” he said.

  “Why don’t you look happier about that?” I asked.

  “Raise up your hospital gown and look at your right arm,” he said.

  It was an odd request, but I did what he asked, because it was simple, and he had that look that you never want to see on your doctor’s face. The one just before they told you something you didn’t want to hear about your health or someone else’s.

  I pushed up the sleeve and there was what looked like a tattoo in a band that encircled my arm just below the shoulder. It was pale blue and looked tribal. I touched my skin and it felt like it always felt. I closed my eyes and ran my fingertips over my skin, and there it was, the slightest of texture differences. I opened my eyes and stared at it.

  “You didn’t have a tattoo there when I treated you for the demon attack at the hospital,” Dr. Paulson said.

  “I don’t have any tattoos,” I said.

  He motioned toward my arm. “You do now.”

  I stared at it, and he handed me his phone with pictures of the outside of my arm. “I figured you’d want to see them and I’d rather you not rush to the bathroom mirror just yet.”

  I stared at the pictures.

  “It looks like a stylized tribal monster,” he said.

  “It’s a demon,” I said.

  “You sound certain, tribal isn’t usually that realistic.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “One of the instructors at the College of Angels had one exactly like it. He said it was supposed to represent a successful fight and slaying of a demon. I thought it was more metaphorical.”

  “I thought what all you Angel Speakers did was carry messages for God. I didn’t think you got on the front lines of the battle between good and evil.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said, still staring at the pictures of my arm—my arm. Master Donel had a shoulder cap above this tattoo and more bands decorating down his arm. They were supposed to represent the path of the Seven Archangels. There was the Archangels pattern in Kali, which was one of the styles that Master Donel taught, part of his Filipino heritage, but staring at the pictures I realized that maybe what I had taken for metaphor in studying the Archangels had been far more real.

  Had Donel known this was coming? Is that why he asked Turmiel to reach out to me about finding his sister? I would find her and that would give me an opening to speak with Donel, or at least with Turmiel. I couldn’t go back to the College of Angels, especially not now. The seraphim had come to my aid with Her at their head. She was awake and active after years of being locked in meditation with God, that was how they had put it. She had been meditating and trying to decide if She would repent or fall. Had what happened two days ago already changed Her decision or forced Her to choose? God, I hoped not.

  “You look shaken,” Paulson said.

  “I’m okay.”

  “If it had been a real tattoo it would still be healing and sore,” he said.

  “I’ve seen other people heal from them, but never done it myself.” Reggie had tattoos when I met her, and I remembered that the seraphim—no, one seraph in particular—had asked me to come home, and home had been Reggie and Connery. Did I remember Her being sad that I loved someone else, that I had a child? Or had I dreamed that part?

  “I’ll go tell your lieutenant that physically you’re fine. He’s been wanting to ask you some questions about what happened.”

  I handed him back his phone. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Are you up to questions, Detective?”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t looking at him or even seeing the room. I was trying to remember something that had happened, but it was like
the harder I tried to remember all the details once I had taken us into angelic space, the fuzzier it all got. The mind protects us from trauma; if I was meant to remember I would, but if not I needed to believe that it was for the best. No, I didn’t believe it was for the best; I felt like something was being hidden from me.

  “I’ll go tell Charleston you’re up for questions if you’re sure?”

  I blinked up at him, rubbing my arm, though it didn’t hurt at all. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  Paulson looked like he didn’t believe me, but he went to get Charleston.

  I answered questions from Charleston and later from Internal Affairs, because there was one dead uniformed officer. Mark Cookson’s body didn’t come back with me. It had burned up in the holy fire, and the demon with it. The fire of God is the only thing that can destroy the “immortal,” even demonic. I was just lucky that the jewelry store security tapes caught it all. The demon killing Stevens, and the fire burning around us. Our bodies had stayed in the store the whole time and looked frozen until the fire started. If the tapes hadn’t proven my story, IA would have been far less forgiving. I mean, who would believe that a cop could call holy fire and burn up a demon. I hadn’t explained the details of what I’d done. Internal Affairs wasn’t big on mysticism; better to keep the answers simple for the report.

  The demonically enchanted bottle had vanished on the trip from our unit to the Magical Forensics Section in the Medical Examiner’s office. The containment box had just been sitting open and empty when they opened the back of the enchanted armored car. If it could help one demon climb out of Hell, then it could help another one. The clairvoyants are searching for it, but so far it remains hidden. I suggested he contact Suriel at the College and he already had, but so far no reply. If the College continued to ignore us Charleston made noise about me contacting them directly. Apparently I went pale because he stopped talking about it. Suriel I wanted to see again, and even Turmiel and Harshiel, but the College as a whole—no. Turmiel got access to a phone, because he texted me that the angels had healed Harshiel. When I tried to question Turmiel about the demonic bottle loose in our city he said he’d try to talk to Suriel, but he promised nothing. I tried to text him back, but he wasn’t there. Apparently he’d borrowed the phone of this nice young lady, and that was all she knew. She did mention that Turmiel was so cute, I’d agreed and hung up.