by L. A. Banks
“I’m human, and it’s in our nature to ask questions, even of the Source, especially when something seems so freakin’ unfair.” She walked away from him for a short distance and then paced back. “Like, who under those circumstances wouldn’t just snap? And, besides, you guys weren’t used to being in a body.”
“True,” he said on another weary exhale. “Those of us who pursued the fallen down to earth were initially engaged in spectacular aerial battles and we retained our etheric form. Violating the edict was never in our consciousness nor was the temptation there to do so. But as those aerial dogfights turned into ground campaigns where we had to search and destroy the enemy on the ground—an enemy that had become manifest because of the length of time they’d spent in this density—we, too, had to adapt. Our clean, aerial battles became guerrilla campaigns fought with human villages used as shields and innocents strategically put in harm’s way to make us hesitate to raze an entire region where our enemy was located. That’s when the problems began.”
“I cannot imagine the insane dogfights that must have taken place,” she said quietly, staring off into the distance. “It must have dwarfed old World War Two air campaigns, maaaan . . . or like F16 fighter jets scrambling to address a terrorist threat.”
“Yes, more like the latter. We move at accelerated speeds while in etheric form. It is a sight to behold. To you it would appear as streaks of light across the sky . . . or a meteor shower.”
Celeste turned and looked at him. “I do get why you all were given the edict. If one person can sway others and create a movement . . . that can go either very badly or very well, and we humans are capricious. We have free will.”
“From your own recent history, compare what Gandhi did, or the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., to the evil done by Adolf Hitler. Each was just a single individual with something extra that no one could identify. Celeste, I could sit you down with your library books and take you back to the dawn of recorded history and show you example after example of how one person’s brilliance or evil genius swayed the entire course of human history. That’s the result of our violating the edict. Need I say more?”
“Whoa . . . those guys were...?”
“Yes.” Azrael laid a hand on her shoulder, unable to keep from touching her again. “Humans have free will. Humans with extreme power added to their DNA can do extreme good or extreme harm. When one of us makes a Nephilim, suddenly the playing field is no longer level. That’s why the prime directive was given. It wasn’t the Source being harsh or toying with the legions of Light. Our physiology is flawless. Our progeny are immune to everything from cholera to the bubonic plague. The intelligence of that being will outstrip that of its peers, even when suppressed. And once in the human gene pool, Angel DNA can lay dormant for centuries and resurface anywhere.”
“Now that is so deep I don’t even know where to begin.” She bit her lip for a moment and he withdrew his hand from her shoulder and shoved both hands into his pockets.
“So, I’m like the result of a war, essentially . . . one of those war babies a few hundred generations removed?”
He nodded.
“And the good guys, your side . . . and the bad guys, the dark side, both were violating the edict, and that’s how you get a crazy dude like Hitler or a living saint like a Mother Teresa or a Nelson Mandela?”
“Essentially. The dark side has no compunction about creating more dark Nephilim, and there are many more of them than there are of you. Our Sentinels regularly root them out . . . just like the dark side hunts for our Nephilim to sway or break . . . or to make ours lose so much hope and faith that they simply end their own existence.”
Celeste rubbed her hands down her face. “This is like CIA, spy games, espionage, but on a frickin’ cosmic level.”
“And that is why I said, unless I identify the brother angel as not dangerous, you stay close to me. Got it?”
Her stunned expression told him she’d heard him, but it took a moment for her to respond. “You don’t have to tell me twice,” she finally said, rubbing her arms as though chilled. “So for a hybrid to walk into a den of angels could be like dropping a woman into a maximum-security prison, is what you’re saying?” She looked up at him, but now he couldn’t meet her gaze. “I mean, I’m just being real, Az,” she pressed on. “Earth has been a prison for those guys that didn’t make it out on time, right? So, even the ones from the good side might not totally be themselves. They would hurt me . . . I mean, to like—”
“Abduct you, yes. Strange things happen in situations of deprivation and war. As above, so below. The only difference is the time line. Humans were created to show those of us in the Light the evolutionary path from darkness to Light. You were to show us the way back to the Source after the separation into male and female, darkness and Light, with free will being your path back to the Divine best within beings. And, I suppose we were to show you the higher ways, but to also learn humility, service, and compassion by serving humankind . . . because this war has demonstrated that any being, put under enough pressure, can break. But most that are from the Light and trapped because they violated the edict eons ago have continued to choose human female mates . . . but that, too, is a soul-destroying choice given the short length of your lifetimes as humans. Every fifty years, a man can find himself burying the love of his life. Do that for twenty-six thousand years and I guarantee that will wear a hole in your spirit. My trapped Sentinel brothers have suffered in ways I cannot claim to know.”
“Damn,” she whispered, then briefly closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, but that’s the only word for it.”
“In this case I agree. So stay close to me as we travel.
You and I must be of one mind, even if I tell you that someone we meet is a brother in the Light. Only if I say trust, do you trust.”
Celeste nodded, then stepped back from him as the trolley finally came. He stared after her as she entered the street car, walked up the steps, and put enough money into the machine for both of them. The machine ate four wrinkled dollar bills, then she bade him with a glance over her shoulder to follow her to open seats. He would have followed her anywhere.
Now that she was detoxed and trusting, he could feel the full force of her inner beauty, could feel the press of her honesty and warrior spirit—all wrapped in a beautiful human package . . . her Light essence wrapping around every emotional cord within his soul.
What was within her was just as magnetic to him as her exterior. Celeste had layers of beauty in various stages of bloom. Her hatred of injustice, her wonder at the majesty of Creation . . . her empathy for even those lost to the darkness, the tenderness in her voice and her kiss and her touch. She’d tried to heal his wing scars, even when she didn’t know or trust him. Then when her gentle hands couldn’t make his scars disappear, she’d spoken kind words against his skin and wished them away nonetheless. And it all happened so fast, so frighteningly fast, just like his rebirth into this mad world.
She sat down on an inside double seat, placing her bag at her feet. He sat beside her, not knowing what to do with his hands, then she slid a soft palm beneath his and threaded her fingers through his and squeezed hard.
“It’s going to be all right,” she said.
For a moment he just stared at her. “I should be telling you that.”
She shrugged. “If what you just told me is true, then you have more to fear than me. I’ll just die and go see all my loved ones.” Her tone wasn’t flippant or sarcastic in any way.
He nodded, then squeezed her hand back. “And when that happens so many years from now, it will be a beautiful place, Celeste.”
“Then let’s make sure you get home when this is all over, too.” She smiled a sad smile. “I’ve got your back.”
He brought her hand up to his mouth, still clasping it with his fist, each finger entwined between hers. She would attempt to protect him? This frail human being who had the heart of a warrior . . . the one who was showing him around the vagaries
of human life, the one who said by her actions, just follow my lead and I won’t steer you wrong. She’d been kind to him even when to her he was a scary stranger. Had fed him and clothed him and asked for nothing but peace of mind and truth in return.
This was what the Source must have known when creating these magnificent beings called humans. This is what the Source was clearly trying to convey when telling the hierarchies and choirs of angels, “Faith, hope, love . . . the greatest of all their gifts is love.”
No words would penetrate through the lump in his throat now. Azrael swallowed hard and stared out the window, watching the houses and lives of the throngs he’d been sent to protect pass by. Every individual mattered. He understood now that each one, no matter how seemingly insignificant, was woven into the fabric of countless other lives. Celeste had taught him that, because this one woman and her dear, elderly aunt meant so much to him that he would bitterly grieve if anything tragic ever happened to them. Even with his knowledge of the so-called larger cosmic picture, he’d become attached to his humans, the ones he’d come to love.
In that way, Celeste had also taught him that there was no such thing as casual collateral damage. The guardian angels had always argued this point . . . and until now he’d thought their passion on the subject was mere rhetorical debate born of their lost perspectives. He’d believed they’d gotten too attached to their subjects to see the bigger picture. It had always been unfathomable for him, especially as a member of the warrior legions, to conceive of any one human being as worth so much trouble.
What did seraphim, cherubim, or thrones know beyond their direct and constant attention to the Source? Those upper hierarchies catered directly to the Source of All That Is and had no contact whatsoever with the infinitesimal troubles of human beings. How could dominions and virtues fathom the antlike importance of a single human life when their focus was that of continents and the order of the cosmos? What would powers and principalities really know of the lives of humans? The upper realms were so much farther removed and focused on issues of a seemingly grander scale. Some even whispered their concern about being sent to babysit these childlike entities, but the Source said that doing so was the greatest task of all. Only archangels and general angels seemed to get it, as Azrael recalled.
He became very still. This was what had caused the ultimate war in the first place—some of his brethrens’ lack of acceptance of the edict to place the concerns of humans above all other tasks. Truthfully, the only difference between him and those that had fallen was that he still respected the Light on blind faith, whereas they had questioned the deep wisdom of the Source and refused to bow down to the Source’s greatest creation—humans.
Yet, being here in the human environment, suffering the human condition, he better understood the paradox that the Source of All That Is had presented: Humans are weak in will and in body, yet that they face these challenges with a belief in something bigger than themselves when all hope should be gone, is in itself an unimaginable level of strength. That they suffer losses and pain and hunger and deprivation, but still forge on, is the will of legends. That they are mortal and know they can die, but rush in where some angels fear to tread is beyond courageous. That is passion. That is conviction. That is strength. That they sacrifice themselves for others when they could be injured or die is the greatest love of all . . . and this capacity resides within each human, and all of that makes humans just as worthy of respect from the heavens as any immortals with the full battalions of the Light on their side.
His new awareness was sobering. Azrael glimpsed Celeste from the corner of his eyes as she stared out the trolley window. Her profile was serenity itself, so different than only a few hours ago. Before this experience he would have asked what were a few thousand microscopic, nonevolved human lives when the bigger picture of victory over the darkness loomed so large?
But he’d been so very, very wrong. The healing corps said that there was no more complex, disturbing, or beautiful creation. And now one had touched him so completely that a mere glance over her shoulder without a word passing between them had made him follow her.
Yes, he would follow Celeste right into the bowels of Hell itself. For the first time in his existence he’d come to know attachment. It was impossible to be philosophical about Celeste, to view her in some larger cosmic context.
He now better understood his earthbound brothers’ pain, unable to even imagine the state of his sanity if he was ever to be separated from her.
Chapter 11
A thud came from the window and Denise Jackson turned away from her afternoon soap opera to stare at the closed blinds. Annoyed, she stood and went to the kitchen and hurried to the cabinets as another thud sounded at her back door. Reaching up with effort, she pulled down an old cookie tin from the top shelf that was heavy with the weight of her peacekeeper.
“Now y’all trying to break into my house during the day? Umph, umph, umph. Ain’t no rest for the weary, but I’ll help you find Jesus right quick, though,” she muttered, and opened the tin, taking out the old .45 that had once belonged to Roscoe.
She went to the window more angry than afraid and peeked out the kitchen curtain. “I got somethin’ for ya! Don’t think you done run up on some ole lady!”
But the next thud from the side of the house made her open the curtains wide and gasp with horror. Five dead crows were littered in her backyard, necks broken by the sheer force of hitting her house. Then she looked up to the adjacent rooftops and telephone lines behind her house and slowly laid the weapon down on the kitchen table.
A murder of crows looked back at her, silent sentries that seemed as if they were eerily waiting for her to leave the house. She hurried through the kitchen and dining room to the front window and peered through the blinds. The first thud she’d heard was a crow that had hurled itself against the window and then fallen onto the wooden porch.
“Got something for that, too,” she said quietly, and crossed herself as she hurried to the end table by the sofa.
As her hand touched the brass drawer handle, the doorbell rang. But she was on a mission and would not be dissuaded from it. She opened the drawer, ignoring the heavy pounding at her front door, and withdrew her Bible, turning to psalm 91 and preparing for war.
“Police! Open up, Ms. Jackson. We can see you in there!”
“I’m coming,” she said calmly, holding her Bible open as she went to the door and turned the latch. “Good afternoon, Officers. You here to see about these crows that done lost they minds?”
She studied the two deceptively handsome faces. One was an ebony black man, one was a white man. One had eyes the hue of bittersweet chocolate, the other had eyes the hue of the bluest sky. One wore a dark charcoal gray suit, the other wore navy blue. One pressed a gold badge to the glass of her exterior security door while she stood just inside it with the inner door cracked open.
“Detectives,” the black man said. “Homicide.”
“Uhmmm, hmmm,” she said, looking at the dead crow on her porch. “Bad sign, ain’t it?”
The two men gave each other a look.
“The dead birds. Evil’s afoot,” she affirmed. “Just like they all hanging on the lines.”
The blond detective glanced around. “There’s no birds on the lines and that’s not why we’re here, Ms. Jackson. Who cares about a dead pigeon on your porch?”
“Do tell,” she said, peering upward. “Strange. They was just all here a minute ago . . . and wasn’t no pigeons. Was mean-ole-looking black birds. Ravens or crows. Big, too.” Then she glanced at the bird on her porch.
It was a pigeon just as the detective had said, but she knew that a moment ago it had been a crow.
“We need to know where your niece Celeste Jackson is—we need to come in,” the ebony-hued detective said, ignoring the dead bird.
“First of all,” she replied coolly, “I don’t have to let no demon in my house. That’s right, I said it. Back up in the name of Jesus. That’s t
he Law.” She pointed upward with a straight forefinger. “Uh-huh, you know what I’m talking about. Second, if you gonna pretend to be human, then you have to have a warrant. Pick a law, God’s law or man’s law, either way you gotta follow the law.”
The detectives again shared a look.
“She’s senile,” the blond muttered.
The other officer didn’t respond for a moment, then turned back to Ms. Jackson. She slowly lowered her hand feeling every ache and pain return to her body as her once straight forefinger became gnarled and arthritic again.
“Your niece is in a lot of trouble, ma’am, and if you’re harboring a fugitive, you’re going to prison right along with her.”
Denise Jackson narrowed her gaze. “You would do this to an old woman, then there ain’t no hope for you, son.”
“Ms. Jackson,” the other detective implored, “just let us in so we can talk to you. We don’t want to hurt you or your niece. We just want to know what happened to her boyfriend.”
Denise Jackson looked down at the open Bible and picked up where she’d left off, reciting the psalm out loud and customizing it to protect her. “‘A thousand may fall at my side, ten thousand at my right hand, but it will not come near me—’ ”
“Do you know what your niece did? She killed a man!” the blond detective shouted.
“That’s a lie,” Denise Jackson said in a placid tone. “The devil is a liar.” She smiled at the two detectives and then began reading louder. ““‘No harm will befall me, no disaster will come near my tent. For He will command his angels concerning me, to guard me in all my ways’!”
“Open the damned door,” the black detective said through his teeth.
“You ain’t got no warrant, do you?” Denise Jackson looked up from her Bible with a smile. “And you don’t have an invitation, demon. If you were real cops, you could bust right in here, but I know what you are and I’m not afraid. And I done lived with Arthur and sugar and high blood pressure all my life—so I ain’t scared that you gave it back to me after a kind soul prayed for me so the good Lord would take it away. When I go on to glory, this old body will be well lived in, so if you trying to scare me, you gotta do way better than that.” She slowly closed the inner door and resumed reading at the top of her lungs. “‘The angels will lift me up, lest I dash my foot against a stone!’ ”