He rejoiced. That God had sent a being of such power to visit him and for a sinner like himself to be entrusted with such a task. This new mission promised things far more important than the gathering of the Holy or the building of the Tower. To redeem a fallen Angel.
7 - St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Felon sneered at the idea that romance had survived the Change. At the conclusion of the last Millennium, Valentine’s Day had degenerated into another commercial undertaking at a time when the true fabric of human relationships had frayed to a thin veil of separation, confusion and suspicion. He growled at the thought of it.
The assassin pulled up to the curb in his stolen car. The Davedi Club was located in a narrow three-story building. It had been spared the indignity of being used as a support column for Level Four that formed a heavy darkness overhead. The Club’s front entrance was of antique design. Its large rectangular window was painted black, with a clear circle framing a neon sign that spoke the club’s name. Beside it was a heavy steel door.
The assassin paused to light a cigarette, rolled the smoke around his tongue, and then spat it out. Felon had a fully automatic M-16 to do the job. He would carry it into the building slung across his back concealed under his black overcoat. The weapon had a heavy smell of oil and old gunpowder. It was an antique by military standards, but Felon found the new M-99’s to be slower to load, and prone to jamming. When you throw ninety bullets in a volley, the chances for a misfire were many and like most things created after the Change, the M-99 was flawed. Felon disdained such overkill anyway. It encouraged sloppiness and waste.
His M-16 was built somewhere overseas, a knockoff produced by the Kalashnikov people using the original pre-Change designs. He’d bought it on the black market twenty years before and maintained it with rebuilt and salvaged parts. It could be set for semi or full automatic. The choice allowed the assassin an option that might save his life—and it gave him adaptability. He thrust four full magazines into the pockets of his ammo vest and hauled himself from the car. Polka music filtered out of the building as he pulled his coat over his weapons. He snarled convulsively, glaring at the building. The Davedi Club was holding their annual Valentine’s Day Dance.
Felon could sense the people inside. Their crowded presence was like a pressure in the air. He snatched the cigarette from his lips, flicked it to the ground and pulverized it with a twist of his foot. The assassin climbed the single stair and pulled the door open. The close atmosphere of the room enveloped him immediately—stillness filled the space. A crowd of people faced away from him; their focus on a stage and an ancient-looking man with an accordion who stood there. He stood smiling between a black guitarist and an older Asian woman with a clarinet. Applause flew up into the dusty air. The ceiling was two stories above their heads. Most of the second floor had been cut away to form a walkway and balcony over the dance floor. Cheers rang out, laughter followed, and the crowd closed to form many tight circles of revelers. The principle color of the décor was red, and the clothing was a dazzling array of scarlet silk. Faces in the crowd were twisted into mad humor and inebriated joy. The air stank of perfume and alcohol.
“Thank you,” chortled the old man with the accordion. “I thank you, and the Beer Barrel Trio thanks you.” Again, applause. Felon made his way along the right side of the room past a man of middle-aged appearance snoring uncomfortably in a wooden chair.
“We have always enjoyed playing at the Davedi Club. And we would never miss the Valentine’s Dance. The air is full of love. The people are full of love. I am full of love!” The crowd responded with a profusion of kissing and laughter. “We make this annual dance the cornerstone of our performing year. I am not getting any younger, as my wife can tell you.” Chuckles echoed through the audience. “But I am made young by this wondrous occasion. The love is what makes us young forever. And we know at least that Love will not change! As always we would like to perform the music that moves us all along the current of life, the dance that inspires romance in us all. We give you now the melody that commands the passion in our hearts and the sky above us.” He turned, nodded to his companions, the lights faded to twilight blue and the small band moved into a cramped rendition of “Moon River.” The old man croaked the words out.
Felon studied a huge cloud of purple helium balloons that crowded over the stage and dance floor. If the Cherubs were feeding, the assassin knew that would be the perfect blind for them. Raw human emotion would be radiating upward like heat. It was natural that their kind would be attracted to a Valentine’s Day dance. They flocked to them like fat flies to shit, feeding off the veiled lust of the dancers; but even Cherubs had rules and followed the covenant of Angels and so could not directly intervene in human affairs, or be in close visual proximity. Among Angels, they went most often in their true physical forms, primarily because of their connection with sensuality, lust and love. Cherubs were historically and mythically thought to be responsible for love, love at first sight, and rekindled love. Felon thought of them as parasites, feeding off an emotion they could not produce themselves.
Felon hated Cherubs the most. He found their rotund little forms and their predilection for romantic love and mischief a perversion. They were the naughty children of some two thousand years. He hated the way they looked, their disproportionate wings flickering obscenely over raw dough buttocks. Felon knew their sweet cinnamon smell, and their idle, eternal child voices—caricatures, really. They were the least impressive Angels, gaining their powers from idle sentimentality and romanticism. He was disgusted by the ugly ambiguity they formed, feeding on the irrational human desire to justify lust. And these sexually barren, golden locked, flying Cupie dolls were nothing more than a pedophile’s dream—they had little to do with love, or the sexuality it thinly disguised.
He slid the M-16 on its strap until it hung under his arm and then gave it a reassuring pat through his coat. Felon squinted into the darkness watching the balloons. There was a steady column of heat rising from the dancers that caused the mass of rubber to undulate, so Felon waited for any telling motion. A man reeking of scotch brushed into him. Felon’s arm did not yield and his stance did not sway. The man, a pre-Change fifty, scowled beneath iron gray eyebrows.
“Damn it...” He rubbed his chest where Felon’s elbow had scraped a furrow in it. “Watch your...”
Felon tore his gaze momentarily from the balloons. He glared into the stranger’s bleary eyes. Something in the look penetrated the man’s drunken haze. His lips trembled and held still. He turned to stagger away.
Then Felon caught a motion out of his right eye. It was a wing, a small, down-covered wing with round-tipped feathers. He whipped open his coat and pulled the M-16 up with both hands, firing into the cloud of balloons. They started breaking with the burping roar of his gun. He fired until the gun was empty, then pulled the magazine out, and jammed another home. The assassin opened up again—the blue tongue of death licked upward.
The crowd moved in a screaming wave away from the sound and flame of violence. He raked the cloud of balloons. They vanished in violent banging echoes, revealing a pair of fat but amazingly fast forms. Two Cherubs flew free of the flying debris. The leader wore a white silk robe and the other flew naked. The Angel in the rear showed streaks of blood on his dimpled skin, and his wings beat more slowly than the other’s.
Felon let up on the trigger, and concentrated his fire at the first Angel that was fast approaching a second story window. Five bullets punched holes in the soft chest, and it hurtled downward with a flutter of wings and robe. He watched it fall as he swung the barrel of the gun on the second Cherub. Its wings flapped hysterically—its golden head clicked from side to side looking for escape, but Felon severed its left wing with a burst of lead. Screaming musically, it landed hard in the center of the dance floor.
The assassin spun to where the other Cherub had dropped. The white robed creature had staggered to its feet, and was limping quickly toward the rear of the hall
. Felon miscued his fire and line of sight—bullets removed the back of its head, and the front of the sleeping man’s. He spun again. A pair of men had frozen at the door like terrified rabbits. Everyone else was gone. A motion of his gun barrel broke them from their paralysis and sent them running.
Felon pulled out the second magazine, and jammed a third into the body of the M-16 as he approached the Cherub on the dance floor. A pool of blood had formed around it—dark red like human blood but with the peculiar property of evaporating slowly at room temperature. Keeping his weapon trained on the dying Angel, Felon drew a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. He looked down on the Cherub, thrilled by the risk he was taking.
Its chubby buttocks jiggled against its attempt to rise; its fat belly was slick with blood. The stump of its wing pumped a hot red jet.
“You’re dying today,” Felon said, watching the Angel as adrenaline thrilled along his nerves. These creatures had Powers. Still, he had the trigger pulled three-quarters back, and he could quickly terminate any spell the Angel tried to utter. Besides, this was part of the contract—earned him a big bonus. At the sound of his voice, the Cherub ceased struggling. With enormous effort, it flipped itself over, and then lay still—its fat chest smeared with crimson rising tortuously. The short arms and legs were splayed at all angles.
“Why?” it asked in a voice of bells and chimes.
“Cleerfindel?” Felon hissed a cloud of gray smoke. He remembered the image his client had shown him.
“I am.” Its dazzling blue eyes met Felon’s dark orbs. Fear crossed its features. “I cannot see you...”
“A Demon hired me to kill you. You caused the woman he loved to love another—a human. He killed them both and has hated you ever since.” Felon took another drag from his cigarette and threw it away. He lowered the mouth of the gun to Cleerfindel’s head.
“I do not remember...who? I do not control love... that is the heart.” Cleerfindel tried to raise himself on an elbow. Felon pushed him back with the gun. “The Demon lies!”
“You lie. Azokal is his name. He wanted you to know that as you died.”
“Azokal...” Cleerfindel’s voice was fading. “Ah, Azokal.”
Felon felt the killing power rising up in him again.
“How human... I cannot see you?” Blood trickled from the corner of its mouth.
“Azokal spits on you.” Felon raised the gun, the sentence fulfilling his contract.
“Human, no.” A ragged gasp shook the Cherub—its eyes went wide with terror. “Yahweh!”
Felon fired at the Cherub’s body until the gun smoked and burned in his hands. He left Cleerfindel in a dissolving pile of gore and checked the greasy smear that was all that remained of the other Angel. Felon walked out of the building and traveled three blocks before taking a public stairway down to Level Two where he caught a cab on the Skyway.
8 – The Entertainers
Mr. Jay lit a candle so they could prepare. It was early. Dawn watched him from her snug tangle of blankets. He hummed cheerfully to himself before turning to her.
“Get up sleepy!” he said, his teeth sparkling in the candlelight. “If you’re waiting for the sun to rise I might as well go without you.” He laughed. “It doesn’t come up in the City of Light.” His face became quizzical as he hovered close. “Which has to make you wonder why they call it that.” Mr. Jay kissed her forehead where she lay by the cubbyhole.
He walked to the table humming and started making breakfast. Dawn rubbed sleep from her eyes and crawled to her feet. Her belly grumbled.
“Maybe they mean the food!” she said, suddenly ravenous. “I’ve never felt so thin and airy and light.”
“That’s because,” Mr. Jay said over his shoulder, “you didn’t eat your supper, or much of it.”
“I’m sick of fish.” She pulled her socks on, and looked in a pack for her shoes. Since the Change, animal flesh did not stay dead, so people ate various exotic mixtures and pastes of plankton and fish.
“Imagine how the fish feel!” Mr. Jay laughed and scooped some sort of mucky substance into a bowl. “Oatmeal this morning.” He pointed to the pack beside her. “Sugar, please.”
Dawn dug into the pack and grabbed a plastic container. She carried it over to Mr. Jay while she kicked and wedged and shoved her foot into her right shoe.
“They go on easier if you untie them.” Mr. Jay took the sugar and sprinkled some on her oatmeal before handing it to her. “It’s cold but I soaked it overnight. You’ll have to use your imagination to enjoy it.”
But Dawn was too hungry to care about a thing like that, and soon dug into the porridge, enjoying the sugary sweetness on top. As she ate, Mr. Jay crossed the room, found his top hat and put it on.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” She asked looking at his hat. It was worn and patched, and had a frayed edge along the back that Mr. Jay hid by wetting his fingers and twirling the fringe around the wire frame.
“What?” Mr. Jay glanced over, pulling his coat on. It was a ragged shambles of a thing, but matched the hat just fine. “Oh, food.” He shook his head and pulled the coat tails out behind him. “I’m not much of a breakfast eater, dear. You know that! Wakey wakey!”
Dawn giggled as Mr. Jay waggled his head, and mimicked what he had told her were fine and gentlemanly ways, with his shoulders and legs stiff, and his elbows bent. He walked across the room and twirled, then twisted the end of his moustache.
“You look the fine figure of a man, Mr. Jay!” Dawn said with a giggle.
“It’s only fitting…” he said. “That I wear this to conjure up notions of the things that were. It’s all in the subconscious.” He slipped his gloves on and bowed with great flourish. “They may not even know it, but it’s there. Teaching them to see it is the hard part. And, as entertainers my dear, we’re obligated to employ all the trappings of our profession to accomplish that. A few loose threads will never overpower the imagination.”
“Conjurer” was what he sometimes called himself, but Dawn had seen people in books dressed like him who were called “Magicians.”
“I answer to either,” he once said with a laugh, “but I don’t pull rabbits out of hats.”
For now, they were “Entertainers.” Dawn had heard it referred to as busking, but what they did was go to street corners where Mr. Jay would do magic and entertain. People would gather around to watch and give them money. Mr. Jay often said it was a hard way to make a buck but that it beat working for a living.
Mr. Jay turned to her from where he was putting some food in a smaller pack. “I could do with some coffee though. When you are through, little princess. So chop chop! You still have to get into your costume!” He held up the fake beard.
As a forever child and being a rare and wonderful thing, as Mr. Jay called her, Dawn was forever in peril of capture. It wasn’t that people hated forever children, but the government still caught any they found and kept them in orphanages for their own protection. Dawn heard rumors of it from other forever children at the Nurserywood. Some said they had escaped from the government, and if they spoke about it at all, it was in hushed tones, with fear on their faces.
So to go out in public, Dawn had to go disguised as a midget. She held the collection basket for Mr. Jay and took great pride in her part of the ruse, because she had learned to disguise her voice and otherwise carry off the charade without discovery.
“Avoid real midgets.” Mr. Jay had warned her. “Most people are afraid to look at a little person for more than a glance, but a midget or a dwarf, he’ll see you eye to eye and know.”
Her costume was a multicolored patchwork of bright materials that covered her body completely. Mr. Jay called it “motley.” It came with its own broad padded shoulders and potbelly sewn into place. The boots she wore rose to her knees and curled up at the toe. Each toe was graced with a small bell—just as her cap bore on each of its five points. To complete the illusion, Mr. Jay would painstakingly affix the dark brown beard to her cheeks
and chin. She hated the glue he used to stick it on with, mostly because it stank and partly because he called it “spirit gum.” Dawn could never bring herself to ask what that meant.
She finished her porridge and then turned in her chair for Mr. Jay to apply the beard and make up her face. He continued to hum as he did so, smiling occasionally at the faces she made.
Though they were meager earnings she gathered in her collection basket, they were able to afford the essentials. And Dawn really loved being an entertainer, costume or not. It allowed her to go out in the streets with people and dance and carry on like she was normal. Otherwise, she spent her days in the shadows. Years ago, she had started coming up with her own tricks. Her body though a child’s was as nimble as a cat’s and decades of living in it had made her dexterous beyond compare.
While Dawn handled the acrobatic part of their act—mainly to keep the crowd’s interest and guard the collection basket—Mr. Jay would prepare for his next bit of magic. He always did that with great flourish, his whole body taking on a rigid, sticklike stance, and his face going flat, eyes looking inward. Dawn was never sure how Mr. Jay actually did his tricks but he had told her that it was a fine art that relied on misdirection as much as it did magic. Regardless, he would come out of his “Gypsy trance” as he called it, and go about the crowd mystifying them with tricks like guessing a person’s name, and their parents’ or friend’s, or he would do other more exotic things. It depended on the crowd; some were easier to please than others.
The pair had traveled a long way with their entertaining, and had performed now so many times that Dawn found herself improvising effortlessly—Mr. Jay had said that this was simply her subconscious having fun with it.
“You don’t want to get bored with entertaining, Dawn. What would be left?”
And she rarely ever felt butterflies in her stomach anymore. As long as Mr. Jay was nearby, she felt that she could do anything.
The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two Page 4