by L. A. Banks
The two officers backed away and jogged down the steps to get out of earshot of her late-afternoon sermon.
“Don’t worry, Malpas. That old broad will have to send out for food soon and will have to open her door,” the blond detective muttered as they walked to their car. He looked up at the crows that had returned to gather on the rooftops and telephone lines. “We’ll know when she does. She’ll open up before—”
“No, she won’t. They aren’t in there,” his partner said. “Azrael wouldn’t have allowed us to reverse his healing of that old battle-ax if he’d been inside. Nathaniel will be displeased.”
Azrael stood on the train platform with an arm slung over Celeste’s shoulders and on guard. She gave him a look but didn’t comment. Yet as out of character as it was, he wanted her near, wanted her body close to his, needed to smell her hair. For a moment he lowered his nose to it and closed his eyes as the fragrance she wore combined with her natural scent wended its way through his sinuses, teasing his palate.
Although they were aboveground and could see the sun and feel the wind on their faces, something felt off and he drew her in closer. Pigeons walked along the ground seeking anything commuters discarded. The birds held his attention for a moment as they squabbled over the end of an old doughnut. Watching them rip apart the tender pastry was oddly disturbing.
Maybe it was his memory of how he’d entered the earth plane. Or maybe it was something much more. But the last thing he wanted to do was upset Celeste. He knew firsthand the dangers associated with the platforms, even though this was the middle of the day and scores of travelers were around. He’d been reborn on the tracks and had been attacked there; somehow there was a purpose to all things. Maybe that initial test he faced was to give him the experience of sensing a human confrontation. That was just the thing, the frustration of it all; it was so hard to become still here so that he could rely on inner discernment. Everything was so intense, especially near the trains. Especially near Celeste.
The power, the vibrations, the thousands of commuters’ thoughts—all converged. He’d sort it out, would try to meditate as they journeyed. He felt sure that he would learn much by traveling to seek Bath Kol by rail. But something was wrong.
Celeste looked up at the same time he looked down at her.
“I’m worried about leaving Aunt Niecey,” she said quietly. “I know we have to go . . . but...”
“Send her Light,” he replied in a firm tone. “Do it with me now.”
“How?”
Azrael drew Celeste closer. “Shut your eyes,” he murmured as his lids slowly lowered. “See your aunt in your mind as whole and safe. Then envision a radiant bubble of white Light encircling her. Fill it with healing and loving thoughts and then send the bubble out wider to cover the room she’s in, and then the house.”
He tried not to frown as dark energy jarred his system. “What do you feel?” he asked quietly, keeping his voice to a private murmur that only Celeste could hear.
“I feel . . . nervous . . . but okay, too.” Celeste opened her eyes. “It took me like five tries to actually get the bubble of Light in my mind to go around her. Each time I’d try to think it, it would only go halfway over her or it would start to change into some dark color. Az...Then all of a sudden I felt like she was all right, but—I don’t know.”
“It’s going to be all right,” he said, looking away from her toward the inbound R7 train. It was the first lie he’d ever told in his existence, and she now hugged him for it.
Celeste rested her head against his chest. “Thanks. I know I’m just tripping.”
He didn’t confirm or deny her assumptions. Instead he just hugged Celeste back, wishing he could yell out that she was getting stronger. Her spirit had correctly perceived the exact danger that his had intuited—her aunt had been under attack. Birds had been used as the eyes and ears of demon sentries. Evil had visited her aunt’s door, but the elderly woman was a tough warrior in her own right. Yet, her body could not take the onslaught for much longer. They would surely use Ms. Jackson as bait to lure Celeste back to Philadelphia, to break her spirit, to make her doubt, and to call her out into the open at a hospital bedside or at a funeral.
Mortality was all around him. This time he looked at the commuters with angel eyes, seeing them as beings of Light devoid of ethnicity or gender. Some Lights were robust and healthy, some thin and frail. Many had dark spots or entire sections missing that caused a break in what should have been an endless, smooth pattern of illumination. Some had gray, cloudy Lights, while still others had bits of color swirling within them. The man to his far left would be gone before the week was out; Azrael hoped the man would use his time wisely. The most disturbing sight of all was seeing where the gray had entered small children, or the ones with blackout areas denoting some form of trauma so early in their innocent lives. For comfort he sought Celeste’s swirling, iridescent radiance that was now so bright it drew him into the warm spill of it.
Azrael briefly closed his eyes and then opened them, willing back his normal human vision. Once again he could see the people around him in their differentiated human exterior forms. Gone were their distracting Lights. There was so much healing to do, but that wasn’t his province nor was it a part of his current mission.
As the train roared into the station, he allowed his mind to become so still that all sounds around him evaporated. Raphael, I know you can hear me through the density—as all archangels have this strength. I humbly call upon your compassion for the elderly woman Denise Jackson. Her niece must fulfill her destiny, therefore must be able to clear her mind of worry and doubt. Her heart cannot be heavy with regret...Please restore and keep Ms. Jackson in your healing Light. I ask that you call in the Mu’aqqibat, the protectors who keep humans from death until their decreed time. I also ask for travel mercy, my brother, as we are all moving through perilous space and times.
He looked up dazed as Celeste tugged on his jacket.
“Come on, man,” she said with a half smile, bringing him into full awareness of his surroundings. “Down here on earth you’ve gotta jockey for position or everybody will bum-rush the seats.”
Celeste stared out the window watching the cityscape go by slowly as the train pulled out of Thirtieth Street Station. Azrael had an arm over her shoulder, and that alone made her worry for him. She could feel the shift in his temperament, the difference in his touch, which had gone from nonexistent, to generic healing and sterile but compassionate like a doctor’s, to much more intimate. And if everything he’d told her was true, this brother was in waaaay over his head.
If she didn’t know anything else, she knew the beginnings of an addiction or at least addictive behavior when she saw it. She’d been in enough rehab programs and therapies that all she had missing was a license to practice.
As calmly as possible, she turned to him and looked up. She met the most tender and open gaze she’d ever seen in her life. A combination of desire and contentment, yearning and repression, seemed to fill his intense, dark brown gaze, and the odd thing was that, now clean and clear, she was almost sure that she could feel it in the pit of her stomach.
“Azrael,” she said quietly. “You have to back off a little, you know. Like . . . this isn’t doing you any good and could really get you in trouble.” She placed a hand on his arm and watched him draw away as though it literally hurt him not to touch her.
“I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to offend or to appear to have taken ownership of your personal space.”
“You didn’t offend me . . . it’s just that you said you guys can get in trouble, if, you know...and . . . .” She looked down at her hands feeling foolish. Maybe that was just how she was beginning to feel for him and not the other way around.
“You’re right,” he said in a low murmur. “When I touch your skin, it’s like being connected to a battery source. I feel all the electrical current in your system enter every one of my cells . . . and it’s, frankly, intoxicating.”
<
br /> She snapped her attention up to meet his gaze. “I get you high?”
He swallowed hard. “That . . . among other things.”
She sent her gaze out of the window. “Oh, that is so not good.”
“I can’t help it,” he murmured, close to her ear, sending a warm vibration into her that thrummed in her belly as he took up her hand. “I’ve never experienced anything like this, Celeste.”
Truth be told, neither had she, but the last thing she’d ever expected was to be some angel’s 12-step program.
“If you don’t stop, you’ll be strung out by the time we get to New York,” she said, watching him slowly slide his palm back and forth beneath hers.
“Friction increases the sensation,” he murmured thickly, then leaned in against her temple to take a deep inhale.
“Yes, it does. That’s how it works,” she said, clasping his hand tightly and holding it still. She pulled back and looked at him hard. “The more you create friction, the more you’re going to want to really break the Law. I can’t let you get put in a position of being trapped on earth from 2012 until the next alignment. Focus on that.”
He nodded, but she noticed his breathing had become shallow.
“Do you know the Serenity Prayer?”
He shook his head, beginning to breathe through his mouth. “I should know it, but my concentration right now...”
“‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.’ ”
She felt his body relax a bit and he released her hand.
“‘Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace,’ ” he said on a labored breath.
“Right. That’s the second stanza.”
“Okay,” he said, sitting back in his seat. “Thank you. I remember the full prayer now.”
“You’re welcome . . . and just keep saying it over and over until we get to New York, and drink some water to flush that extra charge you got out of your system.”
He nodded and unzipped his gym bag, pulling out a liter bottle of water and downing half of it. She watched him blot his damp brow with the back of his forearm and she inched over in the seat a little so their hips and thighs weren’t touching. To her amazement he closed his eyes and physically cringed as though the small space she’d created between them had actually caused him physical pain.
Then she stared down at her hands. They seemed normal to her. She didn’t understand this current he was talking about. Was he picking up on every electrical impulse in her body or getting high on all the billions of chemical reactions firing within her to keep her alive . . . and was it because her DNA had twelve freaky strands instead of two that it affected him that way?
“Yes,” he said, turning toward her with a pained expression. “Your aura is overlapping mine as we sit side by side, and—”
“But last night and at my aunt’s house, you weren’t—”
“Never this close for this long and you’d just been cleaned out. It took a while for your system to adjust and for the nutrients you’d absorbed to kick in...Now, oh, God...” He leaned his head forward and rested it on the seatback in front of them and tightly shut his eyes.
“Should I move? You want me to change seats, to back up? Tell me what to do.”
He held up a hand. “Just let me sit quietly and adjust.”
She inched over closer to the window. “Okay.”
He glanced up and gave her a shy half smile and then began quietly reciting the Serenity Prayer again from the top. It was going to be a long ride up to the city. She’d keep her gaze fastened on the cityscape as the train picked up speed.
Azrael’s quiet smile had consoled her somewhat. Even though she was still worried about Aunt Niecey and now worried about the effect she had on Azrael, something about him brought peace to her spirit. She hadn’t felt it as they’d ridden all the way from Fifty-eighth Street to Thirtieth and then walked the short half block aboveground to Penn Station so they could catch the SEPTA Regional Rail line they were on now. But she definitely felt the change as they took up the entire bench that could have seated four in the half-filled car.
She watched Azrael casually rest his bag at his side, sipping water intermittently. She took out a water bottle and dropped her backpack on the floor between her feet. People around them even seemed unusually calm. Once the conductor took their tickets, she would definitely have to ask Azrael about this.
Unexpectedly, he slipped his hand beneath hers again, then sat back with a contented smile when her fingers found the same threading pattern they’d fallen into while on the trolley. It was almost as though she could hear the sigh in his soul, even though he’d remained completely silent. So much for the Serenity Prayer. She cast her gaze out of the window, thinking about all of it, feeling everything all around her as the train waited for the signal to pull a little farther beyond the station.
Soon the tops of zoo buildings came into view as the train followed what seemed to be a retrospective journey of her life during the past twenty-four hours. Only twelve hours ago she was ready to pitch herself into the Schuylkill River, which they were now crossing. A slight, supportive squeeze from Azrael’s hand made her look away from the memory to find his warm, brown eyes.
“There,” he said quietly with a brief lift of his chin, motioning toward the opposite windows. “I came into one of those underground train stations, reborn into the darkness, and walked until my destiny changed. Whatever it looks like today does not mean it will be so tomorrow. We have both grown in the last twelve hours.”
Celeste agreed by squeezing his hand, forgetting about the forbidden contact for a moment. It was such a natural gesture that she’d done it without even thinking as she stared out at the dilapidated factory buildings and ramshackle houses, also knowing that just around the corner Temple University was building. Everything seemed to be a collision of old and new, and although she wasn’t sure where this adventure was taking them, she was more inclined to try this new path than to stay on the old road to nowhere.
“Tickets.”
She and Azrael looked up at the same time, and she produced the tickets for the conductor, who absently accepted them, then quickly shredded a section on each with a small metal hole-puncher and kept moving.
“That man is so upset about his wife,” she whispered to Azrael. “He does bring his money home and he isn’t cheating. She has got to stop listening to her so-called girl-friends—haters, man.”
Azrael stared at her.
“I’m just saying,” Celeste fussed in a low murmur. “It isn’t right. He makes a decent wage and tries to do right . . . and they’ve got kids and all, you know. If they could just appreciate each other a little more.” She let out a huff of breath and sat back. “I know, I know, it’s not my business.”
“Celeste,” he said slowly, turning in his seat to fully face her, then dropping his voice. “Do you know this man?”
“No. Okay, like I said, and before you even tell—”
“The man took the tickets from you, punched them, and then handed them back . . . and now you have insight into his life?”
She stared at Azrael. For a few moments all she could hear was the sound of the train clicking along the tracks. Then her vision began to blur out the passing buildings, ragged weeds, and overgrown shrubbery framed in the windows behind him. She covered her mouth with her free hand, stifling a gasp as he gripped the hand he’d been holding tighter. Unnatural light seemed to frame everything, and that all bled together with the speed of the train.
Squinting, she quickly pivoted around to look at the other people that were riding in the same car with them. Just like the landscape beyond the window, they were dissolving into an amalgam of light, each a slightly different intensity and some with different odd colors running through them. But when she turned back to Azrael, she almost screamed. His face had become a large orb or iridescent li
ght with vibrant rainbow hues.
“I’m going blind,” Celeste whispered in an urgent rush, squeezing her eyes shut. “Maybe all the stuff I took over the years burned out my retinas or maybe I’m having a stroke.”
“You’re not going blind or having a stroke,” he said, cupping her cheek with a warm, broad palm. “You’re just finally able to see like we do. Touching me is sending current into you that fully turns on your inner Light just like the current you send into me fuses with and spikes mine.”
Panic made her breaths shallow as she peeked at him, glad to see his face was normal and the lights were gone.
“I’ve never had anything like this happen to me, not even when I was in a psych ward.”
“Your body is in a state of repair, so is your spirit . . . with a little kick start from Divine intention.” His handsome smile spread as she fully opened her eyes. “This is just the beginning.”
Celeste rested a hand over her heart. “Okay . . . you have got to clue me in. I have a gazillion questions, and the first series begins with—what am I specifically supposed to do as a part of this whole big crazy thing that I still don’t fully get, when is all this gonna go down, and what all can I do? Like what the Hell just happened—excuse my French.”
He released a patient sigh. “I don’t know what your specific task is, none of us do.”
“Come again?”
“There are too many variables—what they will do, what you will do . . . we just know the broader mission is to gather the Remnant and any sensitives that can help sway the balance. What that will ultimately mean depends on what happens between now and then, which is why we are seeking Bath Kol for advice. Before he became a Sentinel he had dominion over the gift of prophecy. He still retains the gift because he has not fallen to the dark side. He is still of the Light, just trapped on earth.”